


It Hurts To Become

by myownremedy



Series: It Hurts To Become [1]
Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Character, Character Study, Character with PTSD, Disassociation, Disfigurement, Dom/sub, Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Guide Dog, Happy Ending, Light BDSM, M/M, Permanent Injury, Self-Destructive Behavior, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Mark is blind and Eduardo loves him.<br/>Facebook happens along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Hurts To Become

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Andrea Gibson's Poem "I Sing The Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out"  
> Special shout outs to [Alex](http://markzuckerbergs.tumblr.com/), [Jackie](http://pretentiousdooshbag.tumblr.com/), [Diana](http://thebrazilianaffair.tumblr.com/) and [Venla](http://peculiarnuisance.tumblr.com/), as well as everyone on tumblr who endured this mess.  
> The wonderful Jackie read this and picked out any obvious mistakes but ultimately it is unbeta'd, especially the last bit. My apologies.  
> Disclaimer: y'all gay, y'all fictional, I made it all up, do not judge me for this for I am only a humble fangirl, no copyright infringement intended.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (The Social Network), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.
> 
> tw: child abuse, domestic violence, alcoholism, self-injury, eye injuries, blindness, disassociation, self destructive behavior, PTSD and trauma.

_I said to the sun, tell me about the Big Bang._  
_The sun said, “It hurts to become.”_  
\-- Andrea Gibson, _I Sing The Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out_

 

Eduardo Saverin is used to arguments and used to tense silences in between them. It’s still a revelation to him that people argue kindly, playfully. He’s learned that this is something friends do, which frustrates him because it’s a social dance he doesn’t know the steps too.

At first, arguments or loud voices would send him into a panic, make him skitter to the side and look at the wall until he wasn’t there, until he became nothing. But everyone in college is loud, and by sophomore year Eduardo has acquired blinders; he focuses on school and ignores everything and everyone else.

He only notices Mark because the way Mark argues is different. He doesn’t yell and his face is static, which only frustrates the pretty brown haired girl he’s arguing with.

 

Eduardo is sitting next to them in the enormous lecture hall, flipping a pen in his fingers and tuning the professor out, when he hears a flat voice say:

“I don’t need you for this class.”

“You apparently don’t need me for any classes,” a female voice snaps back and Eduardo half smiles to himself.

“Not this semester, no,” the flat voice says, and Eduardo finally glances in the voices’ direction when he hears the girl huff.

“Fine,” a pretty girl with long brown hair snaps, and Eduardo’s eyes flit to the boy she’s talking too, which a blank expression and short curly brown hair. “I’m assuming you’ll still need me for lunch?”

“Whatever,” the boy says. “I’m not really hungry.”

“ _Mark_ ,” the girl exclaims. “This is not how you become successful in college.”

The boy turns his head, very slowly, and faces the girl. His expression is still mostly blank, but his lips are curling downward.

“I’m not going to be successful in _life_ , so why does it matter?”

“You’re such an asshole,” the girl says, but she sounds sad. “I’ll see you later.”

Mark snorts. Eduardo wants to know what’s so funny.

\---

Answers come gradually; Eduardo spends most of European History watching Mark out of the corner of his eye. He notices that Mark never looks down at the book, just runs his fingers over the pages, and that his face barely moves.

But it doesn’t all fit together until Eduardo sees Mark sprawled in the middle of a sidewalk in November, a long white cane just out of reach of his outstretched hand.

Mark is sitting on a particularly rough patch of ice and when Eduardo walks over, trying not to slip, Mark’s head snaps up and his nostrils flare. He’s cradling one wrist against his chest and trying to find his cane with his other hand.

“Who are you?” He demands.

“My name is Eduardo,” Eduardo says and then he bends down and grabs Mark’s cane, guiding it carefully into Mark’s outstretched hand. “I’m in your –”

“European history class,” Mark finishes.

“How did you know that?” Eduardo asks, and Mark blinks at him.

“You smell warm,” Mark says after a minute. “Like the sun.”

Eduardo smiles before he can stop himself, peering at Mark’s hazy blue eyes and wondering why Mark noticed that.

Eduardo ends up half hugging Mark to lift him up, curling an arm around Mark’s waist and gripping Mark’s forearm as Mark’s feet scrabble for purchase on the ice. He can feel Mark’s hipbones digging into his side and is careful not to press too hard on Mark’s arm, feeling the slight bump of a vein beneath his thumb.

“I won’t break,” Mark snaps, like he can read Eduardo’s thoughts, and he finally plants his cane in a patch of snow and manages to lean on it and away from Eduardo.

“I would never forgive myself if you did,” Eduardo’s fingertips are tingling and he shifts his grip on Mark’s arm, curls his fingers around the knob of Mark’s wrist for a moment, the thud of Mark’s pulse coming as a surprise.

He lets go and finds that Mark’s eyes are on him and that his brow is furrowed, like he’s trying to figure Eduardo out and can’t.

“Let me walk you to…wherever you were going,” and Mark shakes his head, expression blank once more

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “I normally don’t fall.”

There’s something odd about his words, like he’s holding back an explanation, and Eduardo watches him and tries to figure out if being blind and being hard to read go hand in hand.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you in class.”

Mark snorts at him, like he did with Erica, and then walks off, the cane tapping too and fro across the pavement. Eduardo watches him go and wonders why Mark insists on wearing a hoody and cargo pants even in winter.

\---

European History becomes impossible to concentrate in, because Eduardo watches Mark’s fingertips trace shapes in his textbook – _reading the braille_ , he realizes – and thinks it’s like Mark’s fingers are carrying out a conversation with the book, with the paper.

Eduardo remembers his own fingers curling around Mark’s wrist and the steady thud of Mark’s pulse and flushes, but doesn’t look away.

Mark’s blind, but not stupid, and when Eduardo has been staring at him for most of the class, he slowly turns in Eduardo’s direction and fixes him with his hazy stare.

“Why are you staring at me?” He demands, and his fingers dart up to touch his own cheek. “Do I have something on my face that no one told me about?”

“No,” Eduardo says, honest, and he wonders if that’s ever happened to Mark before. Something squeezes his heart.

“Then why?” Mark demands, and then he cocks his head. “Are you smiling?”

“Yes,” Eduardo says, because he is. Mark scoots over in his chair, groping blindly – the expression isn’t funny anymore – until his hand find’s Eduardo’s shoulder.

“Can I…?”

Something cracks in Eduardo and he says: “Yes, of course,” even though he doesn’t know what is about to happen, what Mark means or wants or needs.

Mark’s fingers trace a path from Eduardo’s shoulder to his neck, and then to his jaw, and then up to his forehead and down his nose. The touch is tickle-light and something buzzes beneath Eduardo’s skin. Mark’s fingers trace the wide curve of his smile and cup his jawline and smooth the skin beneath his eyes before, very hesitantly, brushing along Eduardo’s lashes.

Eduardo thinks that this is what drowning must feel like.

“You’re not breathing,” Mark says drily and Eduardo’s breath stutters in his chest, trapped in his lungs, weighed down by Mark’s fingers.

Then the touch is gone and Eduardo exhales sharply, turns to look at Mark, who is unreadable as always.

“Why?” Eduardo asks. “Does that…does it help?”

“It helps me picture what your smile looks it,” Mark says, and Eduardo’s heart swells against his ribs.

\---

Eduardo sees Mark at lunch the next day; he’s standing behind Mark and a blond boy in line. The blond boy is telling Mark about what each food tray holds, and Mark keeps making small sounds of disgust.

Eduardo has never wondered how a blind person would navigate a cafeteria before, how they would know what each tray held and how to make a sandwich and where the soda fountain was.

Turns out Mark taps out hidden messages with his cane and lets people steer him around and get him food.

He debates saying hi, debates tapping Mark on the shoulder and identifying himself, but it proves unnecessary, because as Mark turns away from the food, the blond boy at his side, Mark pauses and inhales.

“Eduardo,” he says, and Eduardo flushes, selfishly wants to memorize Mark’s smell the way Mark knows his, wants to press his lips to the base of Mark’s skull and breathe in.

“Hi,” Eduardo says, and the blond boy glances between him and Mark knowingly.

“I’m Chris,” he says and extends his hand, formal – and familiar. “I think Mark’s mentioned you once or twice. You should sit with us.”

That’s how Eduardo meets Mark’s roommates: Chris, the blond boy that Mark likes to call Prada, and Dustin, who is red headed and reminds Eduardo of a terrier.

“You’re the one that helped Mark up when the Winklevii knocked him done!” Dustin exclaims halfway through lunch, and Mark twists in his seat to glare at Dustin.

The world fractures and then expands, everything clear and Eduardo remembers _I normally don’t fall_ and grips the table.

“They pushed you down?” He asks and Mark only responds with a long-suffering sigh, so Eduardo rounds on Chris and Dustin.

“They’ve had a problem with Mark since day one,” Dustin explains through a mouthful of noodles. “No idea why.”

Mark is ignoring them, running his fingers over the table absently like there’s a hidden message. Eduardo reaches out and puts his hand over Mark’s, stilling it.

Mark’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t pull back, and Eduardo curls his fingers around Mark’s wrist and squeezes before letting go.

\---

It’s only natural that Eduardo becomes a permanent fixture at their suite after that. Mark accepts this without comment; he’s distant in the suite, typing on his braille keyboard and listening to the computer tell it back to him through headphones. Chris and Dustin occasionally remind him to eat, or sleep, or shower, and Mark listens about 45% of the time.

It’s a world Eduardo doesn’t want to intrude on. So instead he gets to know Chris, who is in his economics class, and Dustin, who is simply crazy.

It’s a strange place, the Kirkland suite: half stereotypical college life, which endless beers and halo rounds, pizza boxes and top ramen cartons. But for all that four boys share it and Eduardo visits, it’s relaxing, even with Dustin’s rants and Mark’s constant typing.

Despite Mark’s blank faces that made everyone think he was judging them (Eduardo is unsure if he is or is not), there’s not a lot of fear in the suite. Chris is openly gay, Dustin is openly dorky, and Eduardo is…closed off, still, but he’s learning.

It’s easy to relax into endless rounds of Mario cart and to unbutton his dress shirts or maybe even show up in jeans instead of slacks, to tilt his head back and laugh and drunkenly admit that he doesn’t discriminate against sexual partners.

Dustin tries to nudge Eduardo and Chris together at that, and Eduardo thinks maybe Dustin’s obliviousness is what Chris made him fall in love with him in the first place.

It strikes a chord within Eduardo, watching Chris look at Dustin with a mix of exasperation and tenderness when Dustin is ranting about Eowyn from Lord of the Rings and Dustin doesn’t even notice.

It’s a safe crush, an easy crush – a terrible crush, because nothing will ever come of it.

Eduardo tries not to think of Mark’s hands on his skin and fails.

 

He’s not the only one Mark does that too; if he’s around Chris and Dustin when they’re emotional and he’s not wired in, he’ll amble up to them and lift a hand to what he guesses is their cheek, always pausing and waiting for permission. He’ll trace Chris’s furrowed brow, palm Dustin’s ginger scruff, and even brush a thumb across Eduardo’s twisted mouth. It’s analytical and Mark nods in satisfaction whenever he’s done, but the sensation of his fingers linger, making Eduardo bite his lip and flush deep.

But no one touches Mark like that; no one touches Mark at all except to guide him along a path or alert him to their presence if he’s too distracted by coding to notice.

Mark is kept apart from them, either by his blindness or by choice or by something else, or maybe a mixture of all three, and Eduardo thinks that it’s too early to miss someone he’s just met.

\---

Eduardo’s childhood has taught him to memorize details, to attune to something that seems trivial but can become as pivotal as a bullet through the brain. It’s part of the reason he’s good at economics; he memorizes stock trends and notices if something is off kilter or askew.

Because of this, Eduardo has schedule of the Kirkland suite memorized after two weeks. He knows that Chris and Dustin trust Mark enough that they don’t escort him to classes, but at least one of them takes him to lunch. Surprisingly, it’s usually Dustin, because he knew Mark as a child, knew him before he was blind.

This fascinates Eduardo because he didn’t know that he was living in the _after_ period and he wants to know about the _before_ period.

On Thursdays, however, Mark goes to lunch himself. Eduardo learns that Mark meets Erica – the girl he was arguing with – there, and no one escorts him because they have class.

 

In late November, when finals are approaching and campus life is oddly muted, a blizzard strikes. Eduardo thinks nothing of it – he doesn’t have class today – until lunchtime rolls around and he realizes that it’s Thursday.

The snow is so thick that he can barely see, and he imagines Mark wandering out in this, the landscape disguised by snow and rendering his cane useless, all paths and all routes hidden.

Mark would be stranded.

Eduardo pauses only to wrap a scarf around his neck before setting out to find Mark. Snow swirls with every step and the wind tries to steal his scarf and Eduardo thinks about Mark in this weather and is glad for the muffling effect of the snow, because the idea of a lost, helpless Mark is so painful he physically hurts, heart swollen in his chest and lungs forcing air out prematurely until his chest is burning.

He finds Mark standing in the middle of the path that leads from Kirkland to Lowell, looking lost. Mark’s clutching his cane to his chest and moving his head back and forth, trying in vain to see.

“Mark!” Eduardo gasps, and he stumbles forward. Mark stills, unsure where to look; the snow muffles everything, makes it unclear who is talking to him or where they are.

“Mark!” Eduardo calls. “Mark, it’s me, it’s Eduardo.”

It’s a testament to how frightened Mark is that he visibly shows emotion, shoulders sagging with relief and eyelids fluttering unnecessarily, his mouth twisting as if he’s trying to hold something back. Otherwise he’s still as Eduardo approaches, but when Eduardo wraps an arm around his shoulders, Mark leans into the embrace.

He’s trembling and Eduardo pretends he doesn’t notice, just curls his hand around Mark’s and leads him back to Kirkland, back to his suite.

“I’m so sorry,” Eduardo babbles as Mark unlocks the door, swiping his keycard with shaking fingers, “The blizzard came on pretty suddenly and it’s interfering with service and everything right now, we had no way to reach you.” He doesn’t even have Mark’s cellphone number – doesn’t even know if Mark has a cellphone – but he knows that only lack of service would keep Dustin or Chris from warning Mark.

Mark nods, but he’s stiff again, jaw clenched and hand white knuckled on his cane.

“Mark?” Eduardo asks, gentle. “Are you okay?”

“I hate being kept in the dark,” Mark snaps, but he’s not mad at Eduardo, he’s just mad, and Eduardo tries to think of something to say that will make this better and falls short.

“I’m going to make you some food,” he says instead; he knows there’s a frozen pizza in the fridge and the Kirkland suite thankfully has a kitchenette that includes an oven.

Mark nods and wanders over to the couch, leaning his cane on the arm before collapsing. Eduardo busies himself with cooking, because he is good at this, good at making an unfixable situation at least bearable with food or tea or an icepack. Later, he introduced alcohol into the mix, but it was a bad remedy and he’s hesitant around it still, even when he’s almost of legal age.

 

“The pizza’s cooking,” he tells Mark, wandering out of the kitchen, and Mark nods, fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie idly.

“I wasn’t always blind, you know,” Mark’s confession is sudden and it shocks Eduardo into stillness; he doesn’t want to move or even breathe in case it makes Mark stop talking.

It’s such a deeply ingrained reaction that he maintains it even though Mark is blind, and only with great difficulty does he ask: “Yeah?”

“I was fifteen,” Mark says, and after a minute Eduardo walks over and sits next to him on the couch. Mark doesn’t twist to face him or even acknowledge his movement: he just keeps talking. “It was during the summer. I used to fence, but it’s mostly in the winter, so during the summer I spent a lot of time at the pool.”

Eduardo has turned to look at Mark now, and he’s never been quite this close before, never noticed the faint white scarring beneath Mark’s eyes.

“I was on the diving board,” Mark continues. “Most diving boards are nine feet, maximum. But this pool was really cool because it an extra high one – I think it was fifteen feet – and I was on that one.”

He stops, huffs a laugh that feels so self-deprecating it makes Eduardo flinch.

“I was going to do a cannonball,” Mark says. “I wanted to splash my little sister. But…I got in an argument with this kid, I don’t even know what it was about, and he pushed me off the diving board.

“Ordinarily it wouldn’t have mattered, but I was so surprised that I just…didn’t react, and kept my eyes open when I hit the water.”

Eduardo must have made a noise, because Mark’s hand comes to hover above his cheek and Eduardo leans into the hand instead of saying anything. Mark’s fingers go directly for the skin beneath Eduardo’s eyes, lingering there before mapping out the rest of his expression. He’s still trembling and his touches are unsure and fleeting, but instead of removing his hand when he reaches Eduardo’s chin, he traces his way back to beneath Eduardo’s eyes and lingers there.

“It’s called retinal detachment,” Mark’s voice is very flat now and very even and Eduardo thinks that the fact Mark is unreadable is entirely due to control and not due to his blindness. “The impact of the water caused uncontrollable hemorrhaging and the pressure made my retinas peel away from the rest of my eyes.”

Eduardo thinks _laser eye surgery_ and _that was three years ago_ and _was the water the last thing you saw?_ Instead he just blinks and Mark shivers when he feels Eduardo’s eyelashes.

“I tried surgery,” he admits, like he’s reading Eduardo’s thoughts, because Eduardo is so transparent that even Mark can see him. “But it didn’t work.”

Hesitantly, Eduardo moves until he’s pressing a thumb to Mark’s cheek. “May I?” He asks, and voice hoarse.

Mark nods and Eduardo lightly traces the scars around Mark’s eyes, his fingertips tingling. His skin feels overstretched and too tight, all of the sudden, and he focuses on Mark’s hazy eyes and uses them as an anchor, tries to maintain himself in their pale blue.

“Are these from surgery?” Eduardo asks, and Mark’s mouth quirks up, like he’s embarrassed.

“No,” Mark says quietly, and Eduardo’s fingers still. The skin beneath Mark’s eye is so light that he can feel Mark’s pulse again and it’s pleasant this time, reassuring.

“No,” Mark says again. “I…it didn’t happen all at once. I got out of the pool and I was dizzy, I think I had a concussion, and then I started having vision problems, but…One day, I woke up and I was totally blind. And I lost it.”

The words are stark and honest, and something squeezes Eduardo and makes him bleed, fingers twitching on Mark’s cheek, raising his other hand to Mark’s face as well.

“It was like something was…covering my eyes, and I thought if I could get it off, then maybe I’d be able to see, but I just ended up clawing my own skin.”

The scars feel different beneath Eduardo’s fingers, heavier, uglier, but he rubs the pad of his thumbs along them anyway, as if he’s trying to smooth them away.

“They aren’t noticeable,” he says quietly, and Mark’s lips twist again, this time in disbelief.

“I mean it,” Eduardo says, trying to be firm but keep his voice soft. “I only just noticed them. And I spend a lot of time looking at you.”

“Why?” Mark asks, and Eduardo smiles and know Mark can feel it; Mark’s fingers skate down to trace his lips anyway.

The oven timer goes off and Eduardo latches onto it because if he answers Mark’s question he will be unable to take it back, and he’s not sure he can control the avalanche of words that are waiting at the back of his throat.

“That’ll be the pizza,” he says, hands dropping from Mark’s face. “I’ll get it.”

“Okay,” Mark says agreeably.

It’s only when Eduardo returns to the common room, bearing pizza on two plates, that Mark smiles at him – a real smile, the first he’s even seen, and Eduardo wants to drop everything and stick his thumbs in the dimples in Mark’s cheeks.

“Thanks,” Mark says, and it’s so out of character for him that Eduardo almost _does_ drop the plates. Instead he sets them on the table in front of the couch and sits down, brushing his fingers against Mark’s knee.

“Anytime.”

\---

After that, Eduardo is invited into Mark’s private world. The distance is no longer so great, and he spends an equal amount of time in Mark’s room, studying on Mark’s bed, as he does playing video games with Chris and Dustin.

He studies, and he watches Mark and he learns – because details are important and Mark has proven to be unpredictable in rage and in fear, even if it was three years ago.

Eduardo prizes himself on being prepared, so he learns out of self-preservation, but he learns, too, because Mark is endlessly fascinating.

Mark uses a keyboard that has braille stickers on it, not a proper braille keyboard, because he has the keyboard’s layout memorized. He has a special computer that will read what he’s written back to him if he types in a certain combination.

If Mark is left to his own devices, he won’t shower very often and he survives on cans of tuna, Red Vines and Red Bull – the last two make his mouth bright red and Eduardo always has to look away and think of hurricane statistics until his body settles down.

What Eduardo notices the most, though, is that even though Mark finds things like eating or sleeping or necessary personal hygiene to be unimportant, he never misses a class.

Eduardo asks him why, one day, and Mark repeats what he said the day of the blizzard: “I hate being kept in the dark.”

It takes Eduardo a while to figure out that Mark means he hates not knowing everything, and thinks maybe this is linked to his control complex, which Eduardo was also wrong about – control, for Mark, has everything to do with being blind. Being blind means he’s given up most bodily autonomy, that he has to depend on other people and inconsistent technology.

It’s only logical to maximize on the control he still possesses. Eduardo even suspects that the reason Mark doesn’t always eat or sleep or shower is because he’s asserting that he still has the power to make those choices.

It’s funny – Eduardo had seen Mark’s blank face and seen a sort of camaraderie in him, had thought he knew why Mark was so carefully controlled, especially because being blind and small makes him twice as vulnerable. But Mark’s reasons for controlling his facial expressions are so utterly opposite what Eduardo’s reasons are.

It doesn’t matter, he eventually decides, because he’s become more open while at Harvard. Maybe part of it is because Harvard isn’t home, and doesn’t have the people home has; maybe it’s because Mark can somehow tell from Eduardo’s breathing or voice when he’s making a new expression, and will want to feel it, to catalogue it and examine it like someone examines a topographical map.

When break rolls around and Eduardo does have to go home, he says goodbye to Mark last, holding Mark’s face in his hands and brushing the scars with his fingertips.

It’s the only gesture of affection that Mark will reasonably tolerate – it’s their version of a hug – and Mark does the same to him, tracing Eduardo’s face one last time as if he’s trying to memorize it.

Eduardo’s skin buzzes where Mark had touched him the entire plane ride home, and he finds himself pressing his fingers to his own face and wonders how it’s possible to miss someone’s touch so much.

\---

Break is too long and Eduardo finds the heat of Miami restrictive rather than comforting. He spends time in coffee shops or libraries, reveling in the silence and the air conditioning and thankful that he can still escape.

His father does not speak to him, does not look at him, which makes it a successful break. His mother is drunk, but functional, and Eduardo tiptoes around them and tries not to disrupt the routine they established in his absence.

When he returns to Harvard, he drops off his bags before heading straight over to the Kirkland suite, where a sullen looking Chris greets him by hugging him and Dustin greets him by pressing a beer into his hand and demanding details on his break.

“It was okay,” Eduardo says vaguely, and flips the question. He learns that Dustin made out with his ex girlfriend on New Years – Eduardo’s eyes slide to Chris and Chris grimaces, and Eduardo wonders again how Dustin doesn’t know – and that Chris finally got a parka adequate to New England temperatures.

“You southern belle,” Dustin laughs at him, and Chris makes a face at him, because he’s gay, not a girl.

Eduardo extracts himself from their argument and heads into Mark’s room, where Mark is sitting at his computer, but not typing. He looks up when Eduardo comes in.

“Eduardo,” Mark says, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face.

“Hi, Mark,” Eduardo says and he beams back, knowing Mark won’t see it, knowing it doesn’t matter. He does it anyway.

“How was your break?” He asks, and Mark twitches, hands drumming on the keyboard for a fraction of a second.

“I found out that I’m getting a guide dog. This summer,” his voice is carefully neutral.

Eduardo thinks about control and dependence and how maybe there’s a difference between codependence and interdependence, and then thinks about dogs and wagging tails and starts to laugh.

“I don’t understand the joke,” Mark says drily and Eduardo sighs and shakes his head.

“I just saw you as more of a cat person, is all,” he says, and Mark tilts his head in confusion.

“They can’t give me a seeing eye cat,” is all he says. “It would have to be a cougar or something.”

“Seeing eye cougar,” Eduardo says, and Mark’s lips twitch into a small smile.

“Why aren’t you getting the dog now? I mean – do you want it?”

Mark shrugs, an exaggerated movement, but Eduardo has seen Mark’s typical shrug and knows this is a genuine one instead of a passive way to say _fuck you_. “It will make some stuff easier,” he says. “Like, I’ll know when it’s safe to cross the street because the dog won’t move if I tell it too and traffic’s still going. And if I drop something the dog can bring it to me. And I can go into town more, and stuff.”

It sounds enormously helpful and Eduardo wonders why Mark hadn’t gotten one in the first place, and then remembers _control_ and adds _pride._

“Also, I have to train with the dog for at least a month,” Mark says. “So that’s why I’m doing it over the summer.”

“Sounds cool,” Eduardo says, and Mark thinks about it for a minute before nodding.

 

When Mark announces to Chris and Dustin that he’s getting a guide dog next year and that he hopes that won’t be a problem, Eduardo smiles to himself and Chris looks pleased.

“I definitely don’t have a problem with that,” Dustin says. “Chicks love dudes with a dog. You’re going to have no problem getting laid.”

Mark turns such a fierce and incredulous look on Dustin that Chris and Eduardo laugh, because they know that it will take more than a girl liking his dog for Mark to consider sleeping with her.

“Sex is the last thing on my mind and the last thing I’m going to use my dog as a tool for,” Mark says. “Besides, it’s annoying when people try to pet your dog. It distracts them and then they aren’t useful.”

“But we’ll get to pet it, right? When you aren’t using it?” Dustin sounds so concerned that even Mark cracks a smile, albeit a brief one.

“Yeah,” he says. “You guys have privileges, living with me and all.”

“Don’t forget Eduardo,” Chris chimes in, and Mark’s fingers twitch against his thigh in a movement that has Eduardo riveted.

“How could I?” Mark asks drily, turning his face in Eduardo’s direction, and Eduardo still swallows hard.

\---

Eduardo memorizes Mark’s schedule preemptively so he’s there when Mark gets out of classes – if it doesn’t interfere with his own schedule – and he makes an effort to eat as many meals with Mark (and Chris, and Dustin) as he can. By some unspoken communication, the responsibility – or privilege – of guiding Mark through the cafeteria has fallen to Eduardo and he accepts it, pleased to be able to guide Mark with a hand on the small of his back or on his elbow.

Eduardo remembers finding Mark alone in a blizzard and harbors the fear of that happening again, and doesn’t deny it as a contributing factor for why he’s spending so much time with Mark. Protection – and taking care of someone – is something Eduardo excels at. If Eduardo is being honest with himself, he enjoys it, enjoys taking care of Mark in a way that’s purely necessary instead of unhealthy, because Mark isn’t capable of being fully independent.

Another perk is that he gets to touch Mark more, gets to learn more, is privy to Mark’s sarcastic comments or rare smiles.

The next time Mark smiles, Eduardo asks _May I_? and presses his thumbs into Mark’s dimples, and he is so in love that he’s dizzy with it, that the world is crashing down around him and he is unable to care.

He even gets to know Erica, who is in charge with assisting Mark and who Mark tries to avoid, because she was forced on him by Harvard and he dislikes that. Of course, he would have never asked for help if it was up to him so Eduardo privately thinks he’s being a little ridiculous.

\---

The thing about Mark is that he can be an asshole; his sarcasm can cut too deep, his humor can be too dry, and he lashes out at the worst possible times. Once Chris accidentally knocked over Mark’s cane and Mark just _exploded_ , cussing him out so thoroughly that Dustin started yelling at him and Mark started yelling back.

Eduardo didn’t intervene, didn’t do anything – instead he pressed himself to the wall and tried not to be too loud. He avoids Mark for three days afterwards, rattled by the sudden outburst, but more rattled because he didn’t notice the signs.

Mark is more challenging than any economic classes, more difficult that weather patterns, but Eduardo is stubborn and eventually he learns the signs, the slow build of rage due mostly to the stress that being blind and dependent on other people at the age of nineteen brings.

When Eduardo returns on the fourth day, he sits on the edge of Mark’s bed and Mark turns to him in his spinning chair and says, quiet and intense, “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

Eduardo doesn’t try to deny it. He nods, jerkily, remembers Mark can’t see it, and says: “Thanks,” because Mark has revealed the ugliest part of himself to Eduardo and Eduardo can’t deny his damages, his own ugliness.

 

Of course, the next day Eduardo’s father calls. He’s at the Kirkland suite, having just come from a Young Investors meeting, and he stares at the phone in his hand with dread. All four of them are sitting on the couch in the common room, watching _Star Wars: A New Hope_ , and Eduardo taps Mark on a shoulder and asks if he can use Mark’s room.

He shuts the door behind him and flips the phone open, bracing for his father’s voice.

The conversation is short; Eduardo answers in monosyllables, only breaking this trend to volunteer he got a 98% on his latest econ test.

“You aren’t stupid after all,” his father says and Eduardo clutches the phone to his ear and feels himself curl inward.

“I’m only calling to tell you that your Mãe is in the hospital. She fell down some stairs, but she’ll be fine. Stupid woman,” his father adds as an after thought, and Eduardo stares blankly at the window and wonders if she really did fall, if she was drunk or if she was completely sober, if it was on purpose or if someone pushed her.

“Study harder,” his father says instead of saying goodbye. “I expect a 100% on the next test.”

 

Eduardo is still staring blankly at the window when the door opens. Mark comes in, unassisted – he’s memorized the suite’s layout by now – and puts on a hand of Eduardo’s elbow, which surprises Eduardo so much that he turns around.

“Hi,” Eduardo manages, but his voice is flat and everything is very far away, but also far too close, and his skin is too tight across his ribcage.

Instead of saying anything, Mark lifts his hand to Eduardo’s cheek.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, dull, and Mark traces the path up Eduardo’s face, slow and hesitant unlike normal.

“You’re sad,” Mark says finally, and he’s frowning so fiercely that Eduardo doesn’t bother to deny it. “And – afraid.”

Eduardo sits on the bed instead of answering and, incredibly, Mark follows him, sitting next to Eduardo and bumping their knees together.

“My mother fell down the stairs,” Eduardo tells him, his throat like sandpaper. “She’s in the hospital. She’ll be fine, but…”

“Why?” Mark asks, and that’s what Eduardo has been turning over and over in his head, so he sighs heavily and lays back on the bed, suddenly exhausted.

“I don’t know.” He admits. “I don’t – I don’t think I want to know, Mark.”

Mark is silent, and Eduardo watches him, more out of habit than anything else. But he’s still surprised when Mark kicks off his shoes and then crawls onto the bed next to Eduardo, urging him to scoot over with one impatient gesture.

Eduardo blinks and then Mark turns towards him and slings his arm over Eduardo’s hip and props his head up on his other hand.

Eduardo automatically turns into the embrace, folding his knee and feeling Mark mirror his movements, and then Mark’s breath is stirring the hairs at the nape of Eduardo’s neck, and the buzzing in Eduardo’s skin abruptly…stops.

It takes time for him to relax, the fear in him uncoiling and then disappearing entirely, and then he’s floating, anchored only by Mark’s arm and by the sound of Mark’s breathing.

Mark does have a smell; Eduardo notices it after the first fifteen minutes, catalogues the cleanness of it and stirs only to ask: “What cologne do you wear?”

“It’s deodorant,” Mark answers, and he shifts so he’s pressed more firmly against Eduardo. “Go to sleep, Wardo.” He pauses. “You’re safe.”

Eduardo sleeps.

 

He wakes to Chris and Dustin peering at them from Mark’s doorway. Mark is still sleeping, breathing open-mouthed into Eduardo’s neck, and there’s nothing secret about the smile that creeps over Eduardo’s face.

“About time,” Chris murmurs, and Dustin looks between him and the bed and then makes a noise like he’s starting to understand.

\---

They don’t really talk about it, because Eduardo is too afraid to bring up and Mark seems to act like it’s completely normal.

Eduardo thinks _go to sleep, Wardo_ and _you’re safe_ and wonders how Mark can see him so clearly, if vision is even required or if Mark can translate Eduardo’s heartbeats into something that defines him.

What does change is that Mark calls him ‘Wardo’ now, and Eduardo flushes every time he hears the nickname. It’s like Mark is speaking in code and Eduardo doesn’t understand, but he wants too, and ‘Wardo’ is his way in.

Sometimes he forgets that Mark is blind, because Mark always knows if he’s there, because Mark is fiercely independent and types faster than anyone Eduardo has ever known.

But he’s always reminded, sometimes cruelly, when Mark pauses and tilts his head and asks something painful and honest.

“Dustin,” he says one day, “What do Chris and Eduardo look like?”

Eduardo’s heart flutters and his breath hitches and he glances at Chris, who has frozen in the mid sip of his beer, brown eyes wide.

Eduardo remembers _I hate being kept in the dark_ and flushes, but Dustin is talking, is taking it in stride.

“Chris is blond and has freckles. He’s kind…of baby faced.” Dustin is looking at Chris intently and Chris holds his gaze, cheeks going slightly pink.

“Is he taller than me?” Mark asks, brow furrowing, and Eduardo wonders what Mark looked like at fifteen and how much he’s changed since then.

“Yeah,” Dustin says, “a little.”

Dustin and Mark are the same height, and Mark’s known Dustin since they were young, knows that Dustin is red headed and ridiculous and has warm brown eyes and a shark nose.

“What about Eduardo?” Mark asks, and Eduardo flushes, helpless.

“He’s really tall,” Dustin says. “Six feet, right?”

“Yeah,” Eduardo remembers the day he outgrew his father, remembers being able to catch his father’s fist and force it back while his mother cowered behind him. He remembers seeing the measurement _6’_ and feeling the weight of it, a mantle that signaled _protection_ and _adulthood_ and _freedom_ written wrapped up in one number.

Dustin is still talking. “But Eduardo has really ridiculous hair so add another inch or so,” which Chris protests is being generous; Eduardo gels his hair now, and Mark makes a small sound. “He looks Brazilian –”

“You’re Brazilian?” Mark demands, turning his face to Eduardo and sounding incredulous. “You didn’t think to mention that you’re _Brazilian?”_

“Um, hello, ‘Eduardo,’” Chris tells him. “Did you think he was a white boy with that name?”

From Mark’s flush, it’s clear that _yes, he did_ and then he frowns and says: “That’s why you have an accent,” and Eduardo huffs a laugh at him, because he doesn’t have an accent, not really, not anymore.

“Yeah, so he has black hair and sort of golden brown skin, and brown eyes. Also, great eyebrows,” Dustin finishes and Eduardo touches his eyebrows, self-conscious, remembering when his first girlfriend had insisted on tweezing them for him.

“I like his eyebrows,” Mark says blandly; he’s run his fingers over Eduardo’s face enough to know about his eyebrows, and Eduardo is so very glad.

 

Later, when Mark is typing and Eduardo is sprawled on his bed, Mark turns in his chair and asks: “When did you move to America?” so Eduardo tells him the whole story.

It was when he was younger, ten maybe, and they moved because Sao Paulo is dangerous and Eduardo’s family had made the list of at risk for kidnapping.

“So your father does care,” Mark says and Eduardo flinches; he used to cling to the same idea when he was a child, but lately it’s not enough and he wants more than his father uprooting their entire family as proof that he loves them.

\---

Mark asks a lot of questions after that, cataloguing each answer and Eduardo thinks that the Eduardo in Mark’s head is made up of _you smell warm_ and _six feet tall_ and _I like his eyebrows_ , a mix of phrases and sensations and the golden smell of the sun.

He thinks that it’s beautiful, that Mark gets to know him like this, furtively building a picture of Eduardo like Eduardo’s answers are pieces of code and Mark is trying to program him just right, to adjust the image until it shines clean and true.

Eduardo thinks that maybe Mark knows him better than anyone else, and wishes he had the capacity for lack of visual judgment without being blind.

“What cologne do you wear?” Mark asks,

and Eduardo says: “Prada Amber Pour Homme,”

and Mark laughs and remarks, “Maybe I should call _you_ Prada instead of Chris.”

Chris watches them for a while and eventually takes Eduardo aside when they’re on the couch watching _The Day After Tomorrow._

“When are you going to tell him?” he asks and it’s clear he’s talking about Mark, and the words _never_ and _I already have_ war in Eduardo’s throat.

“He knows,” Eduardo replies, because how could Mark not? Mark knows Eduardo best, has built a picture made of words and touches instead his head and can see Eduardo for who he really is when Mark is blind.

How can Mark not know, then, that Eduardo loves him?

Mark knows, and must not care, and Eduardo accepts that, because at least Mark isn’t ignoring him; at least it hasn’t ruined their friendship.

“I don’t think he does,” Chris says, and he glances over to where Dustin is making Ramen in the kitchenette, opposite the TV. “I think he and Dustin are friends because they’re so oblivious.”

“Peas in a pod,” Eduardo returns; and Mark _is_ oblivious about some things, but not about this.

But Dustin notices too, and he asks the same thing, except he _knows_ Mark and says: “Mark won’t make the first move, Wardo,” and Eduardo flushes and runs his fingers through his hair, because _no moves will be made_.

Of course, Eduardo is always touching Mark, guiding him with a hand on the small of his back. But Mark rarely touches back, and when he does, it’s usually to lay claim to the knowledge of Eduardo’s expressions. He’ll raise his hand, fingertips ready to brush Eduardo’s cheek, and then pause and wait for Eduardo’s hum of permission.

Mark touches out of necessity; Eduardo tries to pretend his touches are for the same reason, when really they are reverent and gentle, prompting Mark more than once to say _I won’t break, Wardo_ in his dry, amused way.

 

One day Eduardo is sitting on Mark’s bed and reading _The Economist_ , which he favors because it’s unbiased and has dry wit, and an article makes him full out laugh, makes his shoulders shake with it.

Mark turns away from his computer, curious, and then shuffles to the bed and sits next to Eduardo. It’s the same as always: Mark’s fingers skate along his brow and down his nose, trace his mouth and then cup his jawline. It’s a routine, and Eduardo can close his eyes and predict exactly when Mark’s fingers will leave his skin.

“You’re shaking,” Mark says flatly, his hands on Eduardo’s cheeks and Eduardo opens his eyes and sees something yawning and huge in Mark, not just in his eyes but in every line of his body.

Something shifts and Eduardo is throw off balance, turning his face so he can kiss the inside of Mark’s wrist.

“Wardo,” Mark breathes and there’s expression on his face for the first time, open and wide.

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo says, but Mark shakes his head and leans forward, the world crystallizes and comes into focus, everything clear and right and true for the first time in Eduardo’s life.

 

When Mark’s lips brush his, it feels like every bone within him cracks and splinters under the weight of it, and then Eduardo is scooting closer and his hands come up to cup Mark’s face.

“Mark,” he whispers against Mark’s lips, but Mark is kissing him, tongue darting out shyly, and then their kisses are open mouthed and hungry.

Mark wraps a hand around the back of Eduardo’s neck, uses it to pull Eduardo further into his kisses, and then they’re sprawled on the bed, Mark beneath him but in control, pressing his hip between Eduardo’s legs.

“Is this… Is this okay?” Eduardo demands, and Mark nods. His mouth is red and he’s flushed from cheeks to neck, and Eduardo abruptly wants to find out how far that flush extends, if it goes all the way to his breastbone.

“I want to take off your shirt,” he tells Mark and lets Mark sit up, watches Mark pull off his t-shirt and sucks in a breath because Mark is thin and beautiful. Eduardo splays his hands on Mark’s ribcage and sees that the flush extends to his chest, and whispers: “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

“You take off yours, too,” Mark says, and he helps Eduardo unbutton his shirt, clumsy, and then when the shirt is finally off Mark trails his hands down Eduardo’s sternum, tongue flicking out to wet his lips, like he’s nervous.

“I can’t see you,” Mark admits, frustrated, but his hands keep moving, spanning Eduardo’s shoulders and trailing down to thumb his nipples, to trace circles on Eduardo’s stomach and grip his hips.

They’ve flipped, somehow; Eduardo is sprawled against the headboard and Mark is sitting on him, fingers trembling and Eduardo is dizzy, is full, is breathless with love.

Mark bends to kiss Eduardo’s neck, inhales deeply and Eduardo can feel the curve of his smile, which makes him trace circles on Mark’s skinny back and palm the bumps of his spine, each one precious, each one a milestone.

“I want this,” Mark tells him, like he’s saying _-4 is the inverse of positive 4_ , like he’s saying _Florida is prone to Hurricanes_ , and Eduardo nods and drags Mark’s face up to his so he can kiss it.

Mark’s eyes are closed – like it matters – but Eduardo keeps his eyes open, intent on every reaction, every movement, every smile. Mark’s mask has fallen away and his face _moves_ now; his breath hitches when Eduardo thumbs a nipple, and he cards through Eduardo’s hair with one hand, the other fumbling with Eduardo’s slacks.

Eduardo has had sex before, and it’s usually desperate and fast, because he loves being fucked, loves someone’s weight anchoring him and filling him, making him feel loved, making him feel wanted.

But this… this is slow, and Mark kisses Eduardo until he must have memorized the shape and curve of Eduardo’s mouth, the imprint of his teeth, so he moves onto Eduardo’s neck, sucking a bruise there.

“Pants,” Mark orders and Eduardo obeys, unbuttoning them and shimmying out of them, and Mark waits about a second before snaking his hand into Eduardo’s briefs and grasping his cock, squeezing it gently and making Eduardo moan.

“Mark,” Eduardo gasps, and fumbles with the buttons on Mark’s shorts, palming Mark’s dick through his boxers and then pulling them down, Mark’s dick hard and curving up towards his stomach.

It’s faster from there, Mark pulling Eduardo’s briefs down and then rubbing their cocks together, Eduardo helping him with the angle because Mark can’t see, and he groans so loudly at the first brush of friction that Mark laughs at him.

“You’re loud,” he tells Eduardo, mouth curving up sweetly and Eduardo huffs indignantly, but Mark soothes him by smoothing a hand over Eduardo’s hip.

“I like it,” Mark admits. “It’s the only way I’ll know if I’m doing it right.” Maybe the confession is sour in his mouth, or maybe he’s terse because he’s Mark and he doesn’t like admitting weakness, but Eduardo takes Mark’s hand and curls it around his erection and thrusts forward.

“You’re doing it right,” He mumbles, and then Mark starts to jerk him off, long and slow, fingernails dragging light on the head. Heat builds in Eduardo’s spine and he moans again, remembers _you’re a slut for this_ and flushes, hot.

“I want to fuck you,” Mark says quietly, hesitantly.

Eduardo thinks _rejection is his biggest fear_ and babbles: “Yes, please, anything, I want you.”

 

He ends up guiding Mark’s fingers to his hole, but Mark has done this before – to himself, he admits while lubing up his fingers – and works a finger, and then two, into Eduardo with ease.

He does it slowly, lips curving as Eduardo babbles and moans and whines, desperate for more, pushing back onto Mark’s fingers until Mark gets the idea and begins to thrust in and out, fucking Eduardo open with only his fingers. He brushes Eduardo’s prostate and Eduardo goes limp and pliant, which makes Mark smile even wider and press a kiss to the nearest part of Eduardo that he can reach, which is the inside of his left thigh.

Eduardo is the one that rolls the condom on and lines them up, guiding Mark in, and it burns and it stings and it’s incredibly sweet, a good pain; the best pain.

“Am I hurting you?” Mark asks, voice gentle, and Eduardo manages _no_ before Mark begins to fuck him.

Mark is blind but not stupid, and Eduardo is stupidly in love and stupidly responsive, so when Mark’s cock bumps Eduardo’s prostate and Eduardo whines, high and long, Mark smiles and shifts so he can do it again, thrusting against it until Eduardo is crying out and clenching around him, fingers digging into Mark’s shoulders hard enough to bruise.

Mark manages to wrap a hand around Eduardo’s cock and it only takes two strokes before Eduardo is coming, spine bowed, body curling towards Mark’s even as his cock paints lines on his stomach. Mark fucks him through it, face screwed up in concentration, his breath coming in sharp little pants.

“Come on,” Eduardo says when he can think again, because Mark still hasn’t come and he scoots into Mark, and Mark’s hips snap against his ass and then Mark makes this long, drawn out whine and gasps, collapsing against Eduardo and shuddering through his orgasm.

It’s the hottest thing that Eduardo’s ever seen.

 

It takes a while for Mark to come to his senses, shuddering back into alertness just as he shuddered out of it, and he shifts so he slips out of Eduardo, fumbles with the condom and manages to tie it up. Eduardo takes it from him, throws it in the trash and then tugs Mark into his arms, wanting to be a big spoon this time.

He presses his lips to the base of Mark’s skull, something he’s wanted to do since Mark said _you smell warm_ and inhales deep, smells the citrus of Mark’s shampoo and the cleanness that is Mark.

“Wardo,” Mark says sleepily, hand groping for the covers that have migrated, somehow, to the floor.

Eduardo drags them over their bodies, covers Mark’s hand with his own and squeezes it. They’re in a vacuum and it’s silent, snow falling outside, the suite empty because Dustin and Chris have class. But vacuum or not, Mark is the most precious thing Eduardo has ever seen, has ever touched, and he loves so much he’s dizzy with it, that he’s blind with it.

They fall asleep like that, holding hands, Eduardo full of love and Mark smiling, and it is perfect.

\---

After that, they’re officially dating, and it’s like normal except more kissing and more sex.

Eduardo thinks _I have a boyfriend_ to himself and it’s something that grows and grows inside of him, a warmth that takes root and spreads like the branches of a tree.

But then, whenever his father calls and speaks in a stern voice, quizzing Eduardo about his grades, Eduardo thinks _I have a boyfriend_ and clamps his lips shut, afraid it will spill out of him and his father’s fury will strike him down from three thousand miles away.

That’s maybe when the first seeds are planted, when Eduardo thinks _Could I survive without my family? Could I do it on my own means?_

 

When spring appears, as unexpected as the daffodils that announce it, Eduardo coaxes Mark outside, curling his fingers around Mark’s wrist and leading him over to a tree, which they lean against.

“It’s beautiful,” he tells Mark and Mark smiles at him, half exasperated and half indulgent. Eduardo has pressed a leaf into Mark’s hands and Mark is tracing it’s veins.

“I can’t see anything, Wardo,” Mark reminds him, but he doesn’t sound unhappy and Eduardo squeezes his hand, wanting to savor this.

“You can see me,” it’s honest and Mark makes a confused sound, so Eduardo explains: “You can see me more clearly than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe you’re easy to see,” Mark says, flippant, but he’s blushing and Eduardo presses a kiss to his palm, flushed and pleased and in love.

 

Their relationship isn’t perfect, because Mark can be an asshole and Eduardo can be a coward, and he wonders, often, why Mark tolerates him, why it’s so important to Mark that he trace Eduardo’s face and know what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking.

He thinks maybe Mark knows this. For every time Eduardo tries to push Mark away, Mark waits patiently, if not with good grace, for Eduardo to come back, to relax against him.

But it becomes harder and harder for Eduardo to flinch away, because Mark _needs_ him in the same way he needs his cane to get around, and Eduardo has always loved to be needed.

Mark doesn’t push and neither does Eduardo, because he’s afraid that if he says _I love you_ then Mark will find that he doesn’t need Eduardo, will remember he existed perfectly fine before Eduardo stumbled into his life. Mark, for his part, is still unreadable; sometimes his fingers tap hidden messages into Eduardo’s skin and Eduardo wonders if it’s morse-code or braille or just _Mark_.

His life is just _Mark_ , Mark all the time, Mark’s fingers on his skin and Mark’s lips on his and happiness everywhere, blooming, growing, and Eduardo aches with it.

 

It’s hard to say goodbye to Mark for the summer. Eduardo tries to avoid thinking about it, tries to savor these long sunlit months he has with Mark, except they’re quick and they race by until finals are a week away and Eduardo is too stressed out for even Mark to distract him.

“You’ll do fine,” Mark says, and Eduardo pauses writing down an equation and thinks _we aren’t all geniuses like you_ and _do you mean it, do you think I’m smart?_

Mark takes all of his exams online; the computer reads him the question and he types in the answer. It’s easy, and Mark hates it, wanting only to use a pencil. Eduardo wonders how someone can really miss filling in a hundred thousand little bubbles and decides everyone misses something different, that each person’s love is nothing anyone else can understand.

 

It’s a mark of how stressed Eduardo is that this time it’s _him_ that goes off, yelling blindly about _algorithms_ and _entitlement_ and other things that don’t really make sense. He’s not yelling at anyone, not really, but Dustin and Chris watch him with wide eyes and Mark finally bangs his cane down, loud, to make Eduardo shut up.

“Wardo. My room. Now,” Mark snaps and Eduardo swallows and obeys, feeling like he’s going to get a timeout, feeling like he’s earned one. He ignores Chris and Dustin’s looks and raised eyebrows in favor of staring at the ground. Mark follows him into Mark’s room, and shuts the door behind them.

“I’m sorry,” he skips directly to pleading without his own permission, terrified of Mark’s rage or a swinging fist even though Mark would never do that, even though Eduardo could fight him off easily.

Mark just sighs at him, long suffering, and props his cane against his desk.

“Get on your knees,” he sighs, quiet, and Eduardo just – just _drops_ , not even thinking about it, even though they’ve never done this before.

He wonders if Mark is going to punish him, if he’s going to fuck Eduardo’s face roughly and make him regret every swear word, every yell, he’s ever uttered.

“Are you kneeling?” Mark asks and Eduardo answers affirmative, so Mark advances until he’s standing in front of Eduardo, until he can stroke Eduardo’s hair, touches feather-light.

“I can blow you. Do you want me to blow you?” Eduardo babbles, and Mark shakes his head.

“Stop talking,” he orders and Eduardo can’t breathe because there’s something crushing down on his lungs; his bones are too heavy and he’s trapped in this room, in this body.

“I’m – I’m not going to punish you,” Mark says flatly and he seems appalled at the idea. “You don’t deserve that.”

“I do,” Eduardo says without thinking about it, thinks about the snap of leather and the feel of bone on bone.

“Wardo,” Mark sighs and Eduardo shivers, presses his forehead to Mark’s knee.

“You’ve been working too hard,” Mark tells him and Eduardo is torn between agreeing and torn between wanting to explain that if his grades aren’t perfect, he will suffer for it.

“I want you to relax,” he says and Eduardo tries, he does, but after a minute Mark sighs and says “Get on the bed.” and Eduardo obeys, pliant and afraid, something buzzing beneath his skin that can’t be smoothed away by Mark’s touches.

But Mark tries anyway, unbuttoning Eduardo’s shirt and smoothing a hand down his chest; tugging off Eduardo’s slacks and pressing a kiss to his knee, and then Eduardo is down to his briefs and Mark is touching him, light and gentle, his face more open than Eduardo’s ever seen it.

“Can I…?” Mark asks and Eduardo manages, strangled, _of course_ because he doesn’t understand, why would Mark want him this way. Eduardo has just proven he is childish and he can almost hear _when will you grow up and stop being such an idiot_.

Mark fucks him slowly, gently, holding Eduardo’s hands above his head and coaxing pleas from Eduardo’s lips until he’s sobbing, Mark’s cock bumping his prostate and Mark holding him down and Mark filling him.

He can’t even think; everything is white and buzzing, but it’s white hot and electric and when he comes it’s with a scream and there are stars bursting behind his eyelids, stars Mark put there just for him.

Mark comes with him and then stretches out on top of him, spent, and Eduardo feels like they’re in the eye of the storm, anchored here forever while the rest of the world spins and turns and turns.

Mark slips out of him and Eduardo disposes of the condom, sluggish and honey-slow, and Mark lays on the bed, naked and uncaring.

“I won’t punish you for being upset,” Mark says when Eduardo has laid back down and their breathing has evened out. “It’s not a crime to be upset, Wardo.”

“Okay,” but there is suddenly distance between them, because while Mark refuses to apologize for anything, Eduardo has been apologizing for everything his entire life and he can’t just change now.

Mark shifts, rolls and flings an arm around Eduardo as if he’s keeping him safe, keeping him trapped on the bed, and maybe Mark is a life ring and Eduardo finds himself clutching Mark’s arm and shaking, afraid, so afraid.

“Wardo,” Mark says, turning further until he’s spooning Eduardo, cradling Eduardo gently, like it’s natural, like he doesn’t mind, “Wardo. I’m here. I’m here, Wardo.”

“But you won’t be,” Eduardo gasps out, struggling beneath the weight on his chest and the knife at his throat. “You’ll – I’ll be in Florida, and I won’t be able to see you, and I’ll have to go home, Mark, home for three months…I don’t think I can.”

Mark holds him, staying quiet until Eduardo has gasped and hiccupped into silence, and the world is quiet as it rearranges itself, cracking open in silence with only Mark’s hands left to heal the fissures of his heart.

 

“You can come visit,” Mark says when Eduardo is half asleep. “My family will love you. And you can meet my guide dog.”

He pauses, says: “Please come, I don’t want to go three months without smelling you,” And the cracks that started when Mark first spoke to him have wormed their way to Eduardo’s heart, he is broken and he is new and he loves, loves so much.

“I love you,” Eduardo tells him, shocked with the weight of it, the revelation leaving him with a sudden shaking force and he revels in Mark’s hitched breath, in the way Mark’s arms tighten around him, holding him close.

“Good,” is all Mark says, but it’s enough.

\---

Eduardo returns to Miami carrying Mark on his skin, hidden messages written by touches and teeth. He hides them, of course, and tells himself it’s because they’re private, not because he’s afraid of anyone’s reactions.

At first, the distance isn’t so bad, because he and Mark e-mail everyday, while Dustin and Chris e-mail him sporadically. It’s tolerable, not preferable, and Eduardo rubs the bruises Mark left him – strangely symmetrical – at night and thinks that this distance is a dull ache and he’s good at dealing with those.

But when he sees his mother stumble and he catches her, she flinches and he replays every moment that lead up to this in his head, desperate for some way to change history.

She walks with a cane now, his Mãe, and won’t answer his questions about her accident, which makes him suspect it was so much more.

Her cane is not white, though, and is does not tap a code against the floor, and the distance grows a little wider, a little more painful.

When his mother accidentally knocks over a wine glass at dinner, Eduardo’s father surges up and forward like something primeval and monstrous, picking up the wine bottle and throwing it at her. She ducks, and it misses, shattering against the wall behind her head, the wine falling heavy like blood.

“Pai!” Eduardo yells, but his father isn’t listening, is saying terrible things like _just break the entire fucking table then_ , _why don’t you?_ And Eduardo sits; still, with his head bowed until the storm is over, breaking violently with another shattered wine glass, his father walking smoothly away as if he had not just punched through them like a wrecking ball.

His Mãe is crying silently, and she gropes for her cane and also leaves, her heels crunching on the broken glass, and Eduardo thinks _why didn’t you leave him_ and _I wish I could protect you_.

He cleans up alone, slicing his finger on a long shard of glass and holding it up to the light, blood dripping from its edges.

“I need to get out of here,” He says to himself, frank and hopeless, and the plan that has been formulating for a while finally explodes into his mind.

\---

Eduardo is smart; he knows this, sometimes even believes it. But he is also desperate, so he takes advantage of policies he knows Brazil has and before he knows it, he’s made $300,000 off betting on oil shares using the weather patterns.

His father lays a meaty hand on his shoulder and says _I guess your foolish obsession with the weather has come in handy for once_ and Eduardo thinks about backhanded insults and doesn’t accept the praise.

$300,000 is a lot of money, but it’s not enough to live on, not when Harvard costs $62,772 a year and Eduardo can’t figure out what to do, thinks the most frustrating thing is having all of the pieces but no way to put them together.

 

He’s at a flea market in downtown Miami one day, wandering the streets and trying to find something that will make his Mãe smile, when he comes across a piece of bronze with braille punched into it.

“Do you know what this says?” He asks the lady who’s selling it, and she smiles and says _I think it says ‘this doesn’t compare to the feeling of your skin’_ and Eduardo swallows, hard.

He buys it, cradles it against his chest and runs his fingers over the braille until he has the sensation memorized. He thinks maybe this is what Mark feels like when he’s feeling Eduardo’s face and chokes back a sob, because the distance is unbearable and he hurts.

He sends Mark the plaque in the mail and doesn’t bother to include a card, because Mark will know, and it’s worth it when Mark e-mails him and says _Come visit._

It’s an order, just like _get on your knees_ and so Eduardo packs his bags and flies out there.

Mark is waiting for him when he arrives at Mark’s house, and he’s clutching the handle of a harness attached to what looks like a small wolf. Eduardo rushes towards him and Mark inhales and smiles, cheeks dimpling, and raises his arms so Eduardo will hug him.

When they break apart, Mark lifts a hand and traces Eduardo’s face and Eduardo sighs into the touch because he’s missed this, because this is what home is to him, this is what love feels like.

“I missed you,” he breathes to Mark and Mark nods and kisses him, cupping Eduardo’s jaw and licking his way into Eduardo’s mouth, and Eduardo is so fucking happy.

They go to get Eduardo’s luggage from the car and Eduardo says: “I didn’t know getting a guide-wolf was an option,” and Mark throws back his head and laughs.

“This is Ianthe,” he says, and Ianthe’s ears perk up slightly at her name, but she keeps guiding Mark forward, not even acknowledging Eduardo’s presence.

“Of course you’d get a dog with an ancient Greek name,” and Mark laughs again.

Ianthe only acknowledges Eduardo when they go inside and Mark slips off the harnass, saying: “Ianthe, greet,” and she bounds forward to sniff Eduardo’s outstretched hands.

“She’s beautiful,” Eduardo says, and Mark flushes, pleased.

“I know she’s red and white,” Mark says after a minute, “but that’s it.”

“How long have you had her?” Eduardo asks, and it’s only been two months but it feels like forever. He can’t stop touching Mark, can’t stop inhaling deeply and smiling widely, and it seems Ianthe approves because she wags her tail exactly once at him.

“About two weeks,” Mark says. “She’s kind of unusual because she’s a Siberian husky and they usually aren’t guide dogs, but she works for me.” There’s real affection in his voice, affection that he would never direct at a cane. Eduardo wonders if Mark accepts Ianthe because some dogs need to work and guiding Mark is her work, not a hardship, or if Mark is just a dog person.

They end up tumbling into Mark’s room, and Mark says _Ianthe, private_ and shuts the door, making it clear she’s not invited.

Eduardo drops to his knees as soon as Mark turns around and rests his head against Mark’s thigh, feeling like he’s crashing against a rock and Mark is holding him steady.

“Can I blow you?” he asks and Mark grins at him, open and easy and Eduardo takes that as a yes.

Eduardo would like to take his time, to tease Mark and savor this, but it’s been two months, so he winds up yanking Mark’s pants and boxers down to his ankles and kissing Mark’s hardening dick gently.

Mark gropes for Eduardo’s head, for his shoulder, and Eduardo offers him his hand so Mark can balance while stepping out of his clothes.

“Wardo,” Mark gasps when Eduardo takes Mark into his mouth, one hand curled around the base. Mark’s dick is heavy on Mark’s tongue and when Mark twitches forward, it bumps the back of Eduardo’s throat, making both of them moan.

He pulls off, tongues the head and the slit and is rewarded by Mark moaning again, by Mark’s fingers twisting in his hair and pulling him forward.

Eduardo isn’t like Mark, doesn’t have an oral fixation, but he loves Mark’s cock, loves the weight of it and the taste of it and the feel of it, and he’s disappointed when Mark pulls him off by the hair, panting.

“I want…” Mark says, and he tugs Eduardo up for a kiss, Eduardo closing the distance and guiding Mark’s searching hand to his waist.

Mark immediately cups Eduardo through his pants and Eduardo groans into the kiss, which never fails to make Mark smile.

 

Somehow they fall into bed, but Mark doesn’t fuck him, doesn’t try to finger him open. Instead he coaxes Eduardo on his side and presses against his back, guiding his dick until it rests between Eduardo’s thighs, brushing Eduardo’s balls and perineum with every thrust.

“Mark, _fuck_ ,” Eduardo says, because it’s incredibly intimate but not enough friction and he wants more, wants to see Mark’s face and have Mark fuck him into the mattress.

Mark just grips his hip, as if to hold him down, and pants against Eduardo’s neck, kissing him sloppily and open-mouthed.

“Can you come like this?” Mark asks when Eduardo makes a particularly loud moan, hips stuttering. “Can you come without really being touched?”

Eduardo wants to deny it because Mark touching him is his favorite thing, is what he craves, is what he flew three thousand miles for, but heat and pressure build in his spine and he gasps, incoherent.

“Answer me,” Mark orders and Eduardo babbles _yes_ and _fuck_ and _please_ and then Mark’s hand creeps from his hip to his ribcage to thumb a nipple and Eduardo is gone, coming so hard he’s seeing stars.

Mark is still working, still thrusting, hands moving wildly over Eduardo’s body but avoiding his cock so Eduardo squeezes his thighs together and then Mark gasps and comes, clawing at Eduardo until Eduardo twists to kiss him.

“Fuck,” Eduardo finally says, and Mark laughs at him, and it’s like the past two months never happened.

\---

Sometimes Eduardo loves so much that he drowns in it, because if he’s shiny and new in Mark’s head, then Mark is like the ocean and Eduardo is barely treading water.

Mark has never told him that he loves him, has never even indicated it, and Eduardo sometimes wonder if he ever will, or if Eduardo will have to be okay with the absence of that phrase in his life.

He’s not brave, not like Mark, who wakes up everyday and walks through the dark. But loving Mark is like being blind, is like walking in the dark, and Eduardo dove in without a second thought, without goggles or an oxygen tank and he’s clinging to the only landmass he can find.

Water distorts every image and Eduardo swims through his love in search of the Eduardo Mark sees, and it flickers and shines at the bottom of the ocean but he can’t reach it. He feels false, like he’s lying, and how can he explain to Mark that he’s not like Mark, not brave, not ready to walk through a dark world with a dog and cane.

So maybe loving Mark is the bravest thing he’s ever done, is the best thing he’s ever done and he sometimes wonders what it would be like if Mark wasn’t blind, if he didn’t fall in the middle of the pavement and then let Eduardo lift him back up.

Eduardo wonders what it would be like if Mark didn’t need him. Eduardo wants to know what it would be like to not need to be needed.

But then, sometimes, Eduardo finds that the ocean he’s swimming in are merely Mark’s veins and he thinks about having a love affair with a needle, with a bottle, with money or with a gun and he’s grateful, so grateful, that the streams and rivers he’s swimming in belong to a boy more beautiful than a sun and not to his own demise.

 

He meets Mark’s parents and is dizzy with the love in their household, in the way Mark’s sister holds his hand and Mark lets her, in the way Mark’s father looks at Mark’s mother, like even if he was blind he would see her, would know that she was beautiful.

It’s clear that he’s not intruding on anything because this is normal, and they love even when Mark lashes out, frustrated with navigating a house that is not longer the one he remembers, and they love even when Eduardo doesn’t understand the concept of a hug and a laugh.

They love.

They even love Ianthe, who sticks close to Mark and turns her mismatched gaze on them, haughty and cautious, and Mark doesn’t even know how lucky he is to have a dog in his corner, a dog rooting for him, a wolf tame only for him.

It surprises Eduardo, how much he wants this, a little house in suburbia with love and friendly arguments and a willingness to work things out and he thinks maybe he could have it, but that he has to escape first.

 

Mark takes him aside, one day, and asks if he can meet Eduardo’s family and Eduardo snaps out _no_ before he thinks about how Mark will react.

Mark goes still and Eduardo wishes Mark would hit him instead of looking like that, and then Mark says: “Is it because I’m blind?” and Eduardo wants to fall to his knees and ask Mark to forgive him, to love him, because no frozen pizza will fix this.

“No,” he says instead of questioning why that was Mark’s first response, because being blind determines everything for him and it hurts Eduardo, hurts him more when he wonders if he would still love Mark if he wasn’t blind.

“My family isn’t like yours, Mark,” he says, trying to brush it off, to make it okay. “You wouldn’t like them, and they wouldn’t approve of you.”

“Because I’m blind.” Mark persists and Eduardo huffs a laugh.

“Because you have a penis,” he says.

“I don’t understand,” Mark says, finally, but he’s not talking about Eduardo’s family being homophobic, he’s just talking about Eduardo’s family and Eduardo agrees with him.

It’s hard – impossible – to explain his family, because it never sounds as bad as it actually is, but he never wants to admit how bad it is, how weak he and his mother are.

He thinks maybe if he was braver he would have gone to a cheaper college and tried to strike out on his own but he’s pampered and he’s cowardly so he stays tied to his father by his purse strings, a leash that’s more like a noose. It stretches from Miami to Harvard and sometimes Eduardo can forget it, but other times there’s pressure around his throat and stars behind his eyes and he’s trapped.

Eventually, he doesn’t have to explain.

 

Mark slips into the shower with him, alerting Eduardo to his presence with a touch on his shoulder and Eduardo turns to find him naked and grasping a handle on the wall that was specifically installed for him.

“At this rate there won’t be any hot water left,” Mark tells, but his mouth is curling up like it’s more amusing than annoying.

Eduardo scoots over, pulling Mark under the spray and pressing his lips to Mark’s forehead, and Mark’s hands come up around him automatically, palms braced on Eduardo’s shoulders.

They clean each other, Mark scrubbing everything he can reach and Eduardo fixing the places he misses, and soaping Mark up with the kind of blissful peace that only Mark gives him.

When Mark is rubbing soap over Eduardo’s back, however, he pauses.

Mark has never touched Eduardo’s back before, not with his hands, preferring to focus on Eduardo’s face or cock or ass, so he’s hesitant when he traces each scar.

“I’ve never noticed these before,” Mark says, sounding disappointed in himself, but his voice is tightly controlled and Eduardo thinks maybe it’s going to snap.

“Do they hurt?” Mark asks, faux-casual and Eduardo looks up at the showerhead, at the water beating down on them and thinks about touches.

“Not anymore,” because they’re old and deep and healed, scars that Eduardo pretends to forget he has, scars that used to be new and made his body bright and alive with pain.

Now he is bright and alive with Mark’s touches, with Mark’s fingers, lightning arcing from Mark’s fingertips start to Eduardo’s sluggish heart.

“Was it –?”

“It was a long time ago, Mark,” he’s tired and he’s defensive and he wants, more than anything, to be the Eduardo Mark sees, bright and shiny and new, not the Eduardo who has scars from his father’s belt and freaks out whenever someone raises their voice.

Mark presses his lips to the largest scar, incredibly gentle, and Eduardo wonders how he can push on through the worst kind of pain but a simple kiss is his undoing.

 

Mark fucks him in the shower, pressing Eduardo to the wall and kissing his back, kissing every scar and every knob of his spine, crouching with difficulty and licking Eduardo open while Eduardo pants and whines and keens.

“Mark,” he whimpers when Mark first slips his tongue into Eduardo.

“Mark,” he says again when Mark wraps a hand around Eduardo’s cock at the same time, stroking him slowly, gently.

Mark licks him open and then says “Hand me the conditioner,” so Eduardo does, and Mark uses it as lube, slicking up his fingers before working them into Eduardo, gentle and easy, curling his fingers to bump Eduardo’s prostate, making Eduardo push against him and whine, desperate and trembling and wrecked.

Maybe Mark was planning to seduce him in the shower, Eduardo doesn’t know, because Mark has a condom handy and manages to roll it on with Eduardo’s help, and then he’s turning Eduardo back to the wall, so his back is facing Mark, and Mark lines up and pushes into him.

Mark’s hips are flush against Eduardo’s ass and his lips and hands are on Eduardo’s scars, smoothing the skin, turning them into something beautiful. Mark thrusts in and out, slow and steady, bumping against Eduardo’s prostate.

It’s not desperate, it’s not fast, it’s not like any sex Eduardo has ever had and his orgasm builds and builds even as Mark remakes him, says _I see your scars and I love you for them,_ and he is bright, he is alive, he is coiled heat and a wild heart and he’s coming all over the shower wall, gasping and clenching around Mark.

Mark comes too, gasping through it, and then wraps his arms around Eduardo and rests his head against Eduardo’s spine.

“I didn’t even have to touch your cock,” Mark says smugly, and Eduardo flushes, because Mark still has no idea what he does to Eduardo.

 

“That’s why you didn’t want to go home,” Mark says, later that night. They’re intertwined in Mark’s bed; Mark is the big spoon, of course, and Ianthe is sleeping next to them on the floor, though she lifts her head when Mark talks, blinking into alertness.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, because there’s no point in denying it.

Mark is quiet, breathing into the base of Eduardo’s neck, but Eduardo knows he’s thinking, not sleeping, and the dark makes Eduardo brave.

“He doesn’t hit me anymore,” the confession is difficult, like sludge on the tongue but Eduardo swallows and says it anyway.

Mark shifts, pulling him closer, and Eduardo stares resolutely at the blank computer screen opposite Mark’s bed.

“Why can’t you leave?” Mark asks, but there’s no judgment behind it, no assumptions that Eduardo _won’t_ leave; Mark seems to understand that he can’t.

“I can’t afford it,” and maybe that’s the worst part of all; instead of saying _I have to protect my mother_ or _I love him and he’s my father_ or _He’s all I have_ , the reason he can’t leave is best summed up in the numbers on his bank statements. “I made $300,000 this summer, Mark, off betting oil futures.”

Mark makes a surprised noise into Eduardo’s neck.

“But Harvard is about $60,000 a year and I doubt anyone in business would ever take me seriously, especially if word gets out that I’m estranged from my father. We’re…we’re very respected in business, and I don’t think my father would ever forgive me of I ruined the image of him as a good family man.”

Mark shifts, hand running down the length of Eduardo’s spine, and then says: “I guess you’ll have to give everyone a reason to take you seriously.”

“Yeah,” Eduardo breathes, but he has no idea how to do that, has no idea if it’s even possible.

“Go to sleep, Wardo,” Mark orders, but he sounds distracted. “I’m here.”

\---

When they return to Harvard, Dustin takes one look at Ianthe and clings to Chris, shouting “IT’S A WOLF! THERE’S A WOLF IN OUR SUITE AND IT’S HOLDING MARK AND WARDO HOSTAGE! SAVE YOURSELF!”

“Dustin,” Mark says, “shut the fuck up.”

Eduardo thinks that Ianthe is Mark in dog form, is an extension of Mark, because she ignores Dustin in favor of licking her paws, like his ridiculousness doesn’t even warrant a reaction.

“Is this your guide dog?” Chris demands. Dustin is still clinging to him, muttering about _I know about your kind, wolf, I saw The Day After Tomorrow_ and he extends a hand to Ianthe, who ignores him. “Why is she ignoring me?”

“Because she’s trained to ignore everything,” Mark says idly. “Ianthe, greet.”

Ianthe sniffs Chris’s hand daintily and wags her tail exactly once before returning to grooming herself, and Chris raises his eyebrows.

“What a classy broad,” he jokes, and Eduardo grins at him. “Hey, Wardo. How was your summer?”

“Eduardo made $300,000 off oil shares,” Mark announces, like it’s something incredible.

Dustin stops freaking out over Ianthe in favor of freaking out over Eduardo, turning huge, worshipful eyes on him. “ _Really?!”_ He demands.

So Eduardo tells them the whole story, and Chris curls up on the floor in order to pet Ianthe, who seems to approve of him.

Dustin still won’t go near her, and Chris finally says: “Christ, Dustin, haven’t you ever seen Balto?” and Dustin flushes and finally ambles forward, offering his palm to Ianthe, who sniffs it and wags her tail before turning back to Chris.

 

It’s weird, because Mark sometimes uses his cane along with Ianthe and sometimes doesn’t, and while Eduardo becomes accustomed to Ianthe’s presence, he misses the _tap-tap_ of Mark’s cane against the floor.

One day he even says so, making Mark look at him incredulously, but Mark uses his cane for the entire rest of the week and Eduardo thinks that maybe the water isn’t so deep, that maybe Mark does love him.

Ianthe loves him too, Eduardo discovers; if Mark is coding then she will jump onto Mark’s bed and curl up next to Eduardo, placing a paw on his notepad in a demand for his attention. He stops wearing slacks to the suite, because Ianthe sheds everywhere, and whenever he complains to Mark, Mark just smiles at him, looking ridiculously pleased.

Eduardo thinks that this is good, that Ianthe is good for Mark, because they work as a team and it’s not just him needing her and her helping him because she loves him. It’s a job for her but it’s a job with her best friend and Mark seems truly happy for the first time, or at least at peace with the fact that he’s blind.

\---

$300,000 sits in Eduardo’s bank account and he thinks about it constantly, thinks about what Mark said that night in his bed and wonders how he could ever attract anyone’s notice, how anyone could ever take him seriously.

He mentions this to Chris and Chris says, “Well, there’s always the Havard Investment Association,” and Eduardo looks at him, thinks, _maybe I could do it._

He joins and then wonders why he wants to work in business at all, because everyone is stuck up and overly serious, and it’s so damn pretentious that Eduardo laughs at them, laughs at himself, wonders why he slicks his hair back like a Mafioso and doesn’t just become a meteorologist.

But he’s in his junior year at Harvard and he can’t afford to switch majors now, and besides, his father would never pay for his education, so Eduardo attends the meetings and tries to relax into them, tries to con them into believing that he belongs.

Mark notices his absence and remarks on it, and Eduardo simply says: “I need to be noticed, Mark,” and wonders why Mark’s brow furrows, like he’s turning an idea over and over in his mind but can’t seem to get it right.

 

It comes to a head one night when Erica, who volunteered to continue helping Mark, comes over to their suite to hang out. Dustin has pressed a beer into her hand and is hanging on her every word, and even Mark is listening, petting Ianthe absently, who is sprawled on Eduardo’s lap.

“I just… like I’m not good at just going up to people and finding out their interests, you know?” Erica says. She’s a little drunk, and Eduardo blinks at her sympathetically. “I don’t know how to chat a random stranger up and say, oh, yeah, we like the same things. How do you even do that?” She takes a pull from her beer, lips wrapped around it obscenely and Dustin flushes until he matches his hair.

Chris is scowling, but Eduardo thinks that’s more to do with how childish Dustin is than his crush.

“I wish…” Erica says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I wish there was a way to know what someone was interested in, and their favorite sports and favorite bands and movies and where they’re from and that way there’s no awkward small talk and no dicking around with someone who has absolutely nothing in common with you.”

Mark suddenly sits straight up, and turns his face towards Erica like she is the sun. His expression is half amazed and half incredulous, like he can’t believe what she just said, and Erica stares at him, affronted.

“What?” She demands. “You got lucky with loverboy here.” she indicates Eduardo, “The rest of us have to suffer through horrible first dates.”

Mark isn’t even listening to her.

“What if you took the entire social experience of college and put it online?” He asks. “People want to go on the Internet and check out their friends. Why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles, whatever you can...visit, browse around, maybe it’s somebody you just met at a party. And their profile will let them list their interests so you know enough about them to form a friendship.”

“I can’t feel my legs,” Eduardo mumbles, just to say something, because everyone else is staring at Mark, because that’s the most they’ve ever heard him say at one time. Eduardo shoves Ianthe off his lap and then Mark is tilting his head and talking again, but more to himself than anyone else.

“It could be called thefacebook. You’d have to be invited; it would be exclusive, so it’s not too easy to get to know people. You have to simulate that experience.”  
“Like being punched by a final club?” Dustin asks, and Mark nods at him, still wearing that half amazed expression.

“ _‘Some things, you will think of yourself…’_ ” Mark quotes, standing and carefully navigating to his room. “ _‘…Some things, God will put into your mind.’_ “

 

It snowballs from there, Mark coding up a rough outline, and Eduardo is amazed that even when he’s blind, Mark can make something so beautiful from tiny letters and pieces of code.

“Wardo,” Mark says one day, after Eduardo has come back from a Harvard Investment Association meeting and has changed into Mark’s clothes in order to relax, “I have a proposal for you.”

So that’s how Eduardo ends up supplying Mark with one thousand dollars to get the company started up, and Mark turns to him and says, “This is it, Wardo. This will get you noticed.”

Eduardo just stares at him, because he never thought about it like that, never thought that Mark had taken his words to heart and had been trying to find a way to fix his situation, because that is not like Mark, Mark does not fix things.

“What?” He breathes out, and Mark half smiles.

“You’re CFO, Wardo. If you want. You get 30% and I get 70%.”

“You’re serious right now.” Eduardo says, and he can’t believe it and maybe the image that Mark has of him in his head and the real Eduardo are closer than ever before, because Eduardo is so in love, is so hopeful, that he’s burning with it. “You want me as your CFO.”  
“Yes,” Mark says, dry as ever, and Eduardo kisses him, reverent, unsure how he found this boy, this love of his, but determined to keep him.

 

The project consumes Mark, and Eduardo lets him go because he gets it, gets wanting to disappear into something that is so much bigger than yourself that you can devote your entire life to it and it still won’t be enough.

But it changes, Mark, too. For the first time he starts skipping classes and barely eats, and Eduardo feels like he did before they started dating, before the blizzard, when Mark was in his own secret world and no one else was invited.

He coaxes Mark away from his computer, of course, for food and sleep and sex, and Mark will wrap his arms around Eduardo and kiss his neck and fall asleep instantly, making Eduardo smile sadly, because it’s lonely.

It’s always lonely around Great Men. Eduardo knows this, but he’s learning it all over again and it hurts.

 

One day he coaxes Mark out to lunch, and they go to the cafeteria with Ianthe and Dustin, Eduardo making Mark a pulled pork sandwich and getting himself some soup. They’re just sitting down when a girl walks over and leans her hip against the table, smiling at Eduardo.

“Hey,” she says, and Eduardo smiles back at her. Her name is Stephanie Attis, he remembers; she’s in the HIA with him.

“Hi,” he says. “How’re you?”

“Good, good,” she says and Eduardo thinks about _awkward small talk_ and sees Erica’s point.

“Hey,” Stephanie says, “so, I’m throwing a party tonight, at The Phoenix, and I wanted to know if you were interested.” She throws Eduardo a flirty smile and Eduardo blinks at her, confused. Next to him, Mark has stiffened and has raised his head to glare at her. Dustin is watching them like it’s a tennis match, head moving back and forth.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Stephanie says, lips curling in that knowing smirk all girls wear like a badge of honor, and Eduardo finally understands.

“He’s busy tonight,” Mark says flatly, and Stephanie makes a surprised sound, finally turning her attention on Mark, who is scruffy and blind and generally beneath her attention.

“What are you, his keeper?” Her lip is curling and her tone is unimpressed and scornful, and Eduardo winces when Mark smiles at her, the expression completely absent of mirth.

“No, I’m his boyfriend,” Mark says sweetly. “And I’m going to be fucking him into the mattress tonight. Maybe some other time, though.”

Dustin squawks, and Eduardo flushes, hot, but Mark is gripping his knee beneath the table, hard and possessive, and it’s incredibly gratifying to know that Mark cares.

“Wow, Saverin,” Stephanie says, raising her eyebrows. “Didn’t know you were the whipped kind.” She sashays away, and Eduardo turns to stare at Mark.

Mark is unrepentant, and he leans over to kiss Eduardo obscenely, prompting Dustin to throw peas at them, but Eduardo kisses back, hungry for this, for acknowledgement and possessiveness and the signs that he is wanted, that he is loved.

On their way back from the cafeteria, Mark grips Eduardo’s hand and says, _”_ Relationship status. So people know that you’re mine,” and Eduardo nods, helpless, already hard in his nice slacks.

Mark blows him when they get back to his room, because for Mark, sucking cock is also about control, and Eduardo tugs on his hair and whines so loudly that Chris yells at them to keep his down.

Mark’s mouth is ridiculous, is red and stretched wide over Eduardo’s cock, and he deep throats without blinking, his hazy eyes staring sightlessly at Eduardo’s, and Eduardo comes so hard he shakes with it.

After, Eduardo curls up under the covers and Mark kisses him, dragging his laptop over to code the site, muttering _relationship status_ over and over under his breath.

Eduardo must have drifted off to sleep because Mark shakes him awake, and it’s 2 am but Mark is wide-awake, face lit by the screen.

“It’s ready,” Mark says, and Eduardo blinks at him, wanting to care but wanting to sleep, and then his eyes focus on the masthead.

_Eduardo Saverin, Co-Founder and CFO._

“Mark!” He exclaims, and he’s awake now, and Mark touches his face, quick and gentle, but the touch is electric and Eduardo is filled with it. “You…you made this?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, and Eduardo kisses him so he doesn’t cry, pulling back to add:

“You have no idea how much this will mean to my father.”

“Sure I do,” Mark says flatly. “But I don’t care about him. You’re going to get noticed, Wardo.”

\---

It goes live that night, and for weeks afterwards people stop Eduardo and say, _You’re Eduardo, right? The one that co-founded thefacebook?_ And he smiles back at them, helpless, because Mark’s right, like always. He’s getting noticed.

Mark, for his part, is a celebrity but ignores everyone, content with Dustin and Chris and Erica and Eduardo and Ianthe. Eduardo gets the impression that Mark is frustrated that people only want to be his friend because he’s the next big thing, but that’s how life works.

On Valentine’s day, Eduardo presents Mark with a piece of metal that says, in braille, _Mark Zuckerberg, thefacebook CEO_ and Mark beams at him, presses Eduardo into the bed and fucks him slowly, carefully, until Eduardo is wrecked and begging. Mark wraps a hand around Eduardo’s cock and strokes once and Eduardo comes so hard he whites out, and he thinks maybe he’s doing better than treading water now, maybe this is getting easier.

 

His father calls after it’s been live for a month, having read about it somehow, and says “Don’t fuck this up, Eduardo,” and Eduardo thinks, for the first time, about hanging up on his father.

Instead he says: “I won’t,” and he won’t, because this is Mark’s and Mark would never forgive him, and Eduardo would never forgive himself.

Mark is waiting, scowling because he can hear the phone call, but doesn’t comment, and Eduardo turns to him and says: “We should expand.”

“Where?” Mark asks, but he doesn’t argue so he must have been thinking about it.

“Yale, Columbia, and Stanford.”

“Stanford’s not Ivy League,” Mark points out and Eduardo leans over to kiss him.

“It’s time they see this in Palo Alto, Mark,” he murmurs and Mark nods, but he’s not really paying attention anymore, too intent on sucking a hickey onto Eduardo’s throat.

 

But Eduardo doesn’t understand, doesn’t fully understand, how big is until his friend Christy, who is president of both the HIA and the GSA, comes up to him and says, blunt: “I can get you a meeting with Sean Parker.”

“What?” Eduardo demands. Christy just looks at him, one eyebrow arched. She’s intimidating as hell and he knows Dustin has tried to hit on her before, only to learn she’s dating a nice girl named Alice who softens her somewhat.

“I can get you a meeting with Sean Parker,” Christy repeats. “He invented Napster. You’ll thank me for this, I promise.”

“How?” Eduardo demands, and Christy says something about _tried to hit on Alice and I, wanted to have a threesome – what is it with Jewish guys and Asian girls?_ But Eduardo isn’t really listening.

 

“Mark!” He says when he bursts into the suite an hour later. “Mark! I can get you a meeting with Sean Parker!”

Mark blinks and then stands, shaky on his feet for the first time ever. “How?” he asks but he’s smiling, and Ianthe wanders over to press herself against Mark’s leg.

“My friend, Christy Lee, knows him,” Eduardo says. “She says she’ll get us a meeting. Isn’t that great? Have you ever heard so many different good things packed into one

regular-sized sentence?”

“Is she the one that wants to sleep with you?” Mark demands, distracted, and Eduardo wonders if this is possible, if Mark really cares about Eduardo more than thefacebook.

“No,” he says to cover his confusion. “That’s Stephanie.”

Mark crosses to him, raising his hand to Eduardo’s cheek and thumbing his lip, tracing his nose and brows, and he’s smiling so widely that Eduardo has to press his thumbs into Mark’s dimples and kiss him.

“It’s happening,” he tells Mark. “It’s getting big, Mark.”

He remembers the first time he saw Mark, when Mark said _I’m not going to be successful in life_ and wonders if Mark knows how far he’s come, how far they’ve come.

 

He thinks that Facebook is good for Mark because Mark is in control of something that serves about 5000 people and it’s an enormous ego boost, to be the CEO of a successful company that he built even though he was blind.

But Mark’s still an ocean, vast and mostly unreadable, and Eduardo wonders what it will take to illuminate him and simplify him into a language Eduardo can read instead of code tapped out against the floor or on a keyboard.

 

He gets maudlin, after they meet Sean Parker and Mark hangs on his ever word and argues with Eduardo about advertisements. He can’t compete with someone who understands and perhaps even matches Mark’s genius, and though Eduardo respects Mark even though he’s blind, Sean Parker’s respect is something completely different.

Eduardo wants to be enough for Mark, wants to have suggested that they drop the ‘the’ so it’s only Facebook, and the effects of the appletinis and the silence between him and Mark catch up to him at their hotel room.

“Do you love me?” He demands, sitting on the corner of the mattress while Mark is undressing. Ianthe is curled up on the floor, but at his tone she raises her head, blinking her mismatched eyes and watching him.

Mark freezes in the act of unzipping his hoodie, like he’s unsure how to answer, and that’s answer enough.

“Yeah, okay,” Eduardo says, and he stretches out on the bed and turns away, so his back is to Mark.

“Wardo,” Mark says, quiet, but Eduardo cuts him off.

“It’s fine, Mark,” he’s lying through his teeth and he’s collapsing in on himself, so distant from the Eduardo Mark sees, and he thinks it’s ironic because Mark can see him and he’s still totally blind.

“No, it’s not,” Mark says finally. He stumbles onto the bed, crawling until his fingers curve around Eduardo’s shoulder. “Eduardo, c’mon.”

“We have a meeting with investors tomorrow, Mark,” his voice is short and he hates being this way, but he doesn’t want to hear Mark’s explanation.

He’s tired of loving people who don’t love him back.

“Eduardo, shut up and listen to me,” Mark orders, and Eduardo obeys without thinking about, clamping his mouth shut.

“Turn over,” He’s never questioned Mark’s orders and he obeys again, and then Mark presses a thumb to the corner of his mouth, brow furrowed.

“I can’t see you,” he says to himself, like he did the first time they had sex and Eduardo sighs, because he knows, but Mark sounds like it really bothers him.

“Eduardo,” Mark says, but Eduardo can’t bare it.

“Mark, if you’re just going to tell me what I want to hear then please don’t bother.”

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Mark says coolly and Eduardo flinches, but then Mark leans in to kiss him.

“I do,” he says, quiet-low-fast and he’s shaking, Eduardo has never seen Mark shake before. “Of course I love you, Wardo, how can you even ask that?”

“You never say it,” Eduardo mumbles, feeling like everything within him is fracturing and yet also coalescing, because _of course I love you_ is the sweetest thing he’s ever heard.

“I love you,” Mark says. “I love you, I love you, I love you – why are you crying, Wardo?”

“Because I love you and I’m stupid,” Eduardo sniffles, and Mark cautiously wipes away his tears, his touches tickle-light.

“You’re not stupid, don’t say that,” Mark says absently. “Wardo – if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be working this hard on Facebook.”

“What?”

“It’s – I’m making it for us, Wardo. Not just me. But. I mean.” Mark fidgets. “That’s not important. Wardo. Yes, I love you. I don’t understand why you don’t see that.”

“Because, Mark!” But he’s not really angry, he’s just frustrated. “You see me more clearly than anyone I’ve ever met but when it comes to you, I’m totally blind. You don’t give me any clues.”

“Eduardo,” Mark is shaking his head, flushed but earnest, “it’s _all_ been about you. It always has been.”

 

They don’t really do romantic, never have, because Eduardo tumbled into this and Mark let him. But the way Mark moves, hesitant, to press his lips against Eduardo, makes Eduardo fall all over again, makes him dive into Mark’s heart and stay there.

It’s always been a build up for this, Eduardo thinks, as Mark tugs off his undershirt and he shoves down Mark’s sweatpants. Mark says “Private” and Ianthe goes into the bathroom, and Eduardo thinks that command is maybe the best thing ever.

Mark is naked first, and Eduardo waits for him to press Eduardo into the mattress, to take control, but Mark flushes, from his cheeks to his breastbone, and Eduardo kisses the trail of dusky hair that leads from lower stomach to his cock.

“I want…” Mark is never shy, but he’s biting his lip now and it’s so different from what Eduardo is used too that Eduardo stills, waiting for Mark to get the words out.

“I want you to fuck me,” Mark says in a rush, like he’s afraid Eduardo will say no, and Eduardo inhales sharply before he can stop himself.

“Are you sure?” His voice is shaking, and he never expected this, never even thought to ask for it, because Mark is in control and Mark needs to be in control and being penetrated is not being in control.

“Yes,” Mark says. He’s bright red now but he gropes around until he can clutch at Eduardo’s knee. “I – I want this.”

 

It’s different, slower, everything soft and hazy in their room, but Eduardo doesn’t need to see to kiss Mark, to scrape his teeth against Mark’s neck so he’ll whine, to love him.

He’s never needed to, but it’s nice to know, nice to know he can depend on the topography that is Mark’s body and the steel trap that is Mark’s mind. Maybe Eduardo’s family is more religious than Mark’s, but he finds himself comparing Mark to a temple, to everything sacred and holy he’s ever seen.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, kissing Mark’s stomach to feel Mark gasp and clench beneath him.

Mark’s cock is hard and leaking against his stomach by the time Eduardo reaches it, kissing the crown and the shaft, making Mark whine, high and loud.

Eduardo has to leave to get the lube and Mark waits for him, patient and naked on the satin duvet cover with his cock leaking and his blind eyes fixed on the ceiling.

It’s too much.

It proves, more than Mark’s words, that he does love Eduardo, and every vein in him seems lit from within until Eduardo can see the very heart of him, can see himself reflected and it’s no longer dark. He’s no longer afraid.

 

When Eduardo works the first finger into Mark, his heart stutters and he hears himself gasp, even as Mark clenches around him. Mark is incredibly responsive, canting his hips towards Eduardo and clenching the duvet cover, and when Eduardo works a second finger into him Mark actually moans. It’s incredibly hot, to have Mark splayed open like this, thighs spread and body flushed, his cock hard and body clenched around Eduardo’s fingers, because Eduardo is _inside him_.

He crooks his fingers and brushes against Mark’s prostate and Mark shudders, mouth sagging open and Eduardo grins and bumps against it again, making Mark arch his back and bear down on Eduardo’s fingers.

“So… so that’s what it feels like,” Mark gasps out, and Eduardo beams at him and does it again and again until Mark’s cock is drooling all over his stomach and Mark is wide open and begging, babbling _fuck_ and _Wardo_ and _please_.

“Yeah, okay,” Eduardo mutters inanely, pulling out of Mark and ripping open the condom wrapper, rolling it on and slicking himself up. He palms Mark’s cock and Mark shudders again, biting his lip.

“Look at you,” Eduardo murmurs; Mark rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Mark, you’re so beautiful.”

 Then he’s lining himself up and Mark inhales when he feels the head of Eduardo’s cock, but he’s nodding, so Eduardo pushes in, slow slow _slow_ , and gasps because despite the condom, it’s way too much.

“Move,” Mark gasps out when Eduardo is fully inside of him, and Eduardo is glad that he can see Mark’s face, glad he’s braced above Mark and can kiss him, long and slow, as he pulls almost all the way out and then thrusts back in.

“Mark, Fuck,” Eduardo says, because Mark’s so tight and so warm that he feels like he’s going to explode, like he’s going to come so hard he’ll crack in half, ribcage and all.

“Wardo,” Mark gasps, impatient, and he trails his fingers down Eduardo’s spine before grabbing his hand, trying to urge him on but still leaving Eduardo in control.

There’s sweat beading on Eduardo’s brow and Mark’s chest is damp, but Mark keeps pushing into Eduardo’s thrusts and Eduardo gives up on going slow and pounds into him, shifting until he can hit Mark’s prostate with every thrust, until Mark is crying out. Eduardo manages to drag a hand over the head of Mark’s cock and Mark is gone, spine bowing and insane half-cut off gasps and whimpers signaling his orgasm. It’s so hot that Eduardo comes too, fucking Mark until they’re both oversensitive, and then sprawling on top of him.

Mark runs his fingers down Eduardo’s spine, lazy and loving, and then works a hand between them and down so he can feel where Eduardo disappears into him, and his expression is that of blissed out wonder.

“Wardo,” Mark mumbles when Eduardo slips out of him, disposing of the condom and tugging on his briefs. “Wardo, I do love you. You know that, right?”

Mark is half asleep already, but he’s clutching at Eduardo’s arm and his expression is earnest, so Eduardo kisses his forehead, gentle with emotion.

“I do,” he says. “Go to sleep, Mark.”

“You, too,” Mark says stubbornly, tugging Eduardo into his arms. “Sleep with me.”

\---

They return to Harvard and Eduardo walks around with _Of course I love you_ lighting him from within. He thinks that his plans to leave his family can wait, that Sean Parker can wait, that this summer can wait, because Facebook is growing and Mark is happier than Eduardo has ever seen him.

Eduardo doesn’t bring up ads again and Mark doesn’t bring up Sean Parker or Palo Alto, and it’s the calm before the storm, Eduardo spending every free minute in the Kirkland suite with Mark and Dustin and Chris and Erica, and occasionally, Christy.

Mark had invited her over to thank her for setting up the meeting with Sean Parker and had taken a liking to her, because she was blunt and wasn’t offended by Mark or intimidated by Ianthe.

One day, Eduardo is heating up take out in the kitchenette while Christy and Mark sit and talk on the couch when Christy reveals: “You’re not the only disabled one, y’know.”

Mark pulls a face, because he’s still mulling over how he feels about the label _disabled_ , simply because he’s proud and he’s stubborn and admitting he’s disabled is far too much like he’s admitting a weakness, but Christy ignores him.

“Frankly I think it’s really cool what you’re doing, with Facebook. I mean you might be this annoying skinny white boy – ” Mark squawks, and Christy laughs – “But you’re also blind and it’s really fucking cool that you’ve done this despite of that.”

“I just…I hate it,” Mark says after a minute. Eduardo busies himself with pressing the buttons of the microwave, trying to get the correct setting, trying not to listen. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t do stuff, you know? It doesn’t define me.”

“But it’s a part of you,” Christy says, and it’s like she gets it. “Whether you want it to be or not. The trick is to not let people use it against you.”

“Are you disabled, then?” Mark says. “You said…”

“Yeah,” Christy says. “Deaf in my left ear. But I think this goes for everything, y’know? I’m short and I’m female and I’m Asian and I’m queer, and people can’t forgive me for that. So fuck them. I’m going to be successful anyway.”

“How… how are you deaf?” Mark demands. “I mean, sorry, that was rude.”

“No, it’s cool,” Christy shifts closer to Mark. Eduardo has defeated the microwave and has turned to watch them, leaning against the wall. “When I was nine I accidentally set my hair on fire, and it scarred my ear so badly that I lost all hearing.” She flips her hair back from the ear and Eduardo can see, now – it’s a patch of scarred flesh and no ear at all, just ravaged skin. “You can’t tell if I wear my hair done, and I’ve gotten good at compensating for it.”

Mark raises his hand to her cheek, and she hums a _yes_ so Mark trails his fingers from her cheek to her jaw and then her ear, and over the scars there.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a minute, mouth twisting like he’s tasted something foul, and Eduardo thinks about the scars beneath Mark’s eyes, thinks about how touches can be good and bad. He thinks about how he carries Mark’s love on his body and doesn’t mind, thinks about how much he hates carrying his father’s scorn on his back.

“Don’t be,” Christy says. She flips her hair back over her ear, smoothing it it down. “I’ve gotten over it, and frankly, I’m more worried about coming out to my parents than what anyone thinks of my scar.”

“Being gay isn’t worse than being disabled,” Mark snaps. “Being… depending on…” He trails off, evidently unable to articulate his words which _never_ happens, and Christy fits a small, manicured hand over his.

“Alice loves me for who I am. That includes my scars.”

“Yeah,” Mark says, and he brushes a fingertip, feather-light, over his own scars. “I guess it doesn’t matter in the long run,” but they’re not talking about scars anymore, and then the microwave dings and Eduardo turns away and remembers when Mark remade him in the shower by fitting his lips over every scar of Eduardo’s he could reach, and how much that meant.

 

If Eduardo could keep them in that time at Harvard, if it was possible for him to have it play on repeat for the rest of his life, he would do it.

Mark turns to him one night, quiet and grave, and says: “I’ve decided to go out to California.”

“Oh,” Eduardo says, quiet-slow, and he thinks about when Mark said _This it it, this will get you noticed_ and then he thinks of Sean Parker saying _you’ve got to come out to California. California is where it’s at._

“Wardo,” Mark’s hands are tangled in Ianthe’s ruff and his brow is furrowed, like he’s trying to see Eduardo even though he can’t, and Eduardo thinks maybe he’s an idiot, thinks that he should never admit to the universe that he’s happy again because it will be ruined.

“Why,” he knows why but he wants to hear, wants to convince Mark that he’s making a mistake, but Mark sighs.

“It’s the best for the company, Wardo.” Mark is frowning at him, like he’s disappointed. “You should want this, Eduardo. You’re CFO. You know this is the right move.”

“And what about for us?” Eduardo demands before he can stop himself. “Should I really want my boyfriend to move away for me, even if it’s just for the summer?”

Mark pales, but bites his lip, stubborn as always and Eduardo knows what’s coming, wants to throw his hands up and shield himself from it, but: “It’s not just for the summer, Wardo.” Mark’s voice is flat, like it used to always be around him. “I’m not coming back.”

 _Of course I love you_ cracks under the weight of those words and Eduardo stands before he can stop himself, backing away from Mark, who reaches out for him, lonely and searching.

“I have to go,” he says, and Mark’s face twists into something sad, into something hurt, but Eduardo’s already leaving, slamming the Kirkland door behind him. He takes off running, not caring what he looks like or what anyone will think, the bricks slick with rain beneath his feet.

 

He doesn’t go to his own dorm, which is the building across from Kirkland. Instead he runs through campus, trying to become nothing but a blur, a shadow in the streetlamps and a hiss of air and sound.

He doesn’t succeed, of course, because he’s not good at being nothing anymore. He’s been trying, ever since he met Mark, to become _something_ , to become the Eduardo Mark has in his head, the Eduardo that is bright and loved and unscarred, who doesn’t live under his father’s thumb and doesn’t watch his mother drink herself into a stupor.

Nothing doesn’t make $300,000 by betting on oil futures. Nothing doesn’t guide the love of his life through the cafeteria while trying to interpret the code tapped out on the floor by his beloved’s cane. Nothing doesn’t stand, 6’ tall and proud, and block his father’s fist from smashing into his mother’s cheek.

 _I’m not nothing_ , he thinks, and his stride falters.

He hits the ground with a _smack_ , sprawling in a mess of limbs, and it takes a minute to realize this is where he curled an arm around Mark’s waist and fell in love for the first time.

It’s still raining, but Eduardo lies back on the pavement, staring up at the dark sky and thinks about drowning, thinks about diving into something dark and terrifying. He can’t see the rain drops that land on him and Harvard is too far into the city for him to see the stars, so the sky is immense and black above him and he’s pinned to the ground by the weight of it. He’s blind and he’s powerless and no one cares; the world keeps spinning and Mark is going to move out to California for Facebook, which he started in an effort to help Eduardo escape.

 _It’s for the company_ he thinks to himself. _He loves you, but he’s doing it for the company._

Eduardo’s never been partial to the idea that if you love something, you have to left it go, because love is scarce and he can’t trust that it will ever come back. He doesn’t want to throw it all away, doesn’t want to hold the door open and say _go on, leave, I don’t care_ because it’s too ungrateful, because he does care, he cares too much.

 _Don’t leave me_ he thinks, over and over again, even though Mark can’t hear him. _Please don’t leave me._

When Mark gets on the plane, Eduardo is there to see him off, and Mark clings to him like he doesn’t want to let go.

“Come with me,” Mark says, fast and out of breathe, and Eduardo wraps his arms around Mark and thinks about never letting go.

“I can’t,” he says finally. “I have this internship, and even after that…I have to finish up at Harvard, Mark.”

“Stanford is better,” Mark says into Eduardo’s neck and Eduardo laughs so he won’t cry.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” He says when Mark steps back, and his voice is gruff enough that Mark curls his fingers around Eduardo’s wrist, like five points of contact will keep the tears from falling.

“Yeah,” Mark says.

They don’t say _I love you_ , because there’s a weight as heavy as the sky on Eduardo’s chest and it’s all he can do to breathe. Mark has curled inward, and his hazy eyes are distant when he steps away from Eduardo, like he’s already in California.

Mark lingers, but Eduardo can’t say anything else, so he kisses Mark, cups Mark’s face and holds him until he can’t bear too anymore, until Mark is slipping through his fingers like rainwater.

“Bye, Wardo,” Mark says finally, and Eduardo just squeezes his hand. He watches Mark board the plane, Ianthe beside him, with teary eyes, and it’s only Chris’s hand on his shoulder that convinces him to turn away.

\---

It’s hard to carry out a relationship with someone on a phone, hard when so much of your relationship was touch and you’re three thousand miles away. There’s too much and not enough to say, and more than once Eduardo falls silent in order to listen to Mark’s breathing, pretending Mark is next to him and that it’s him that is blind.

They argue, of course, because Eduardo is afraid. He ends up paying for Mark’s rental house, and he looks at the decrease in his bank account and feels his hope slip away, feels the noose tighten. He wants them to put ads on the site, something Mark is so against that Eduardo wonders if Mark is even listening or if he’s just being stubborn to be stubborn. He doesn’t know why Mark thinks ads will make the site uncool, doesn’t quite get the importance of being _cool_.

But Mark is short and blind and geeky, and he’s never been cool, so it’s doubly important that Facebook is.

He even accuses Eduardo of sabotaging the site, of wanting them to fail, and Eduardo ends up throwing the phone at the wall, to angry to speak.

 

He thinks about lies, thinks about drowning under the weight of them, and tries to figure out the threads of each story, if the site was originally a way for him to get noticed but turned into a way to get Mark noticed. Mark, who hates and craves attention, who can’t see himself clearly enough to realize that if he wanted attention, all he had to do was ask.

But Mark doesn’t ask and Mark doesn’t apologize, and maybe Facebook is a way to demand something, to demand the recognition he feels he deserves, to demand the connections he feels were denied him because he’s blind.

Eduardo remembers curling up in Mark’s bed and saying, _It’s not fair, what happened to you_ only to see Mark’s face sour and flatten, to have him retort _Life’s not fair, Eduardo, or did you miss that?_ And then he had thought about what he said and crumpled, stumbling to the bed to slot his lips over Eduardo’s, murmuring _I’m sorry, I forgot, I forgot you know that as well as I do._ And Eduardo had managed to gasp, _You were so young, I’m so sorry_ but he wasn’t really talking about Mark, he was talking about himself.

Now he remembers _this is it, Eduardo. This is how you get noticed_ and asks, belatedly, _are you talking about me, Mark?_

It doesn’t matter, he supposes; what matters is that Mark is distant on the phone and distant on the map, and Eduardo rides subways fourteen hours a day and tries to find investors for a site that refuses to take advertising, a site run by a blind college drop out, a site that everyone thinks is destined to fail.

It makes him angry, on Mark’s behalf, because Mark is brilliant, because Mark dropped out only for Facebook, because the fact Mark is blind shouldn’t matter. But it does matter, because the world is ugly and unkind.

Eduardo thinks about the faint white scarring around Mark’s eyes, the scars that Mark put there, and he thinks that if Mark hadn’t put them there, the world would have. Mark got there first. Eduardo thinks, again, about _control_ and suppresses a mirthless smile, because his life is falling apart.

 

He and Mark stop talking, and maybe it’s easier this way, to drift apart, but it hurts because there’s nothing for Eduardo to cling too, no buoy to hold and no landmass in sight. He thinks about changing his relationship status on Facebook, thinks about not being enough.

But he was everything for Mark, was the hand that guided him too foods and the one that reminded him to sleep, was the one that loved him even when he was distant and far away.

Now he really is far away and Eduardo loves him still, but it’s not enough, not when he’s held Mark in his arms and knows what that feels like, knows that Mark knows how to love him back.

His only regret is that there’s not an ocean separating them instead of a landmass, because that would have been fitting, because that would have been reason enough to give up and let go.

 

Dustin calls him in late July, and it’s evident that something is wrong.

“Mark needs you,” Dustin says. “He won’t use Ianthe or his cane, he won’t let us help him; he just sits in the backyard and does nothing. No one can get him to move.”

“What?!” Eduardo has a flashback to Mark sitting in the snow, groping for his cane, and swallows, hard. “Why?”

“No idea,” Dustin says. “We’ve tried everything and everyone. Sean even brought in some hookers,” Eduardo can practically _hear_ Dustin’s eyeroll, “but it didn’t do a thing. He’s just sitting there with Ianthe and she growls at us if anyone gets too close.”

“I’m on my way,” Eduardo says immediately.

\---

He never considered that Mark was going to be the self destructive one, never thought about Mark having bad coping habits, having written Mark’s self-injury as a one-time thing induced by fear.

But it’s clear, _again,_ that Eduardo doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t know anything, and fear beats in his heart and pumps through his veins, because he doesn’t know if he can call Mark back, if Mark will let him.

 

The plane ride is long, the cab ride seems longer, and when Eduardo bangs on the door in the pouring rain, Dustin answers it and beckons him in, not even questioning, pointing to the back of the house and helping Eduardo with the bags.

The house is trashed, alcohol and weed everywhere, but Eduardo has more important things to deal with. From the sliding glass doors he can see the curve of Mark’s back, illuminated by the flickering porch light, and he sees Ianthe curled up next to Mark, her nose in her tail and her ears flat against the rain.

Eduardo goes to him and doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have any words prepared, just wants to pick Mark up and hold him until the rain stops and they figure this out, and fuck the ads because they’re not important, _Mark’s_ important and how could Eduardo not see that?

Ianthe looks up when he approaches, but he refuses to be intimidated by her mismatched gaze. She lets him approach, even wags her tail, but she doesn’t leave Mark’s side and Eduardo thinks that he could learn a thing or too about loyalty from her.

“Mark,” he says when he’s behind Mark, and Mark jerks, having not heard him.

“Wardo?” Mark asks, word almost lost in the rain, and Eduardo kneels beside him with difficulty, placing a cautious hand on Mark’s arm.

“You’re here!” Mark gasps, turning a wet face towards Eduardo and Eduardo smiles at him, helpless.

“I am,” he says, tugging at Mark’s arm until Mark shifts and lets Eduardo hug him. Mark even relaxes into Eduardo’s embrace, shaking slightly, and Eduardo kisses the top of his wet head, curls flat because of the rain. “Mark. _Mark._ What are you doing?”

“You wouldn’t come out,” Mark mumbles into Eduardo’s neck, and he’s clutching Eduardo’s damp fleece, his knuckles white. “I had… I didn’t… I needed…”

Eduardo doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t need too.

“I’m here now,” he whispers, feeling Mark shake, and he wonders if this is his fault or if this is just what happens when they both feel abandoned. “Mark, I’m here, okay? I’m here.”

“Stay,” Mark mumbles and Eduardo nods, pushing _of course_ past his throat. Of course he’ll stay.

 

He manages to lift Mark, curling an arm around his waist like he had a year and a half ago, gripping Mark’s wrist with his other hand and raising him. Mark is unsteady on his feet, weak from hunger or exhaustion or emotion, so Eduardo ends up half carrying him into the house, Mark clinging to him and Ianthe padding by their side.

He levers Mark into a bathroom and shuts the door, stripping them both down. Mark is shivering and wet, and when Eduardo tries to lead him into the shower he panics, looking around in vain.

“Where am I?” He demands, hands scrabbling on Eduardo’s arms. “Where am I?!”

“You’re in the rental house, in Palo Alto,” Eduardo tells him, shifting until he’s holding Mark’s arms down, ‘til he’s hugging Mark against him. “You’re in the bathroom. You need to shower, Mark, and then sleep.”

“Wardo,” Mark says, but he’s hot, fever-hot, and Eduardo turns on the shower and fiddles with it until the spray is warm enough for him to place Mark under.

“I’ve got you, Mark. I’m here.”

 

Mark doesn’t relax, squirms away whenever Eduardo scrubs at his hair or his back, but Eduardo ignores him. He is good at this, he is good at taking care of people, and he will fix this. He will fix Mark.

He doesn’t realize that they’re both crying until he’s toweling them off, Mark finally limp in his arms and snuffling into his neck. When he tries to pull Mark away, to towel off the parts he can’t reach, he sees Mark’s face is red and blotchy and Eduardo decides failure is too high of a cost, that he can never leave Mark again.

How had he forgotten that Mark _needs_ him, not just because he loves him but because Mark is incapable of functioning on his own and hates depending on other people?

“Mark,” Eduardo whispers, his own eyes burning, “Mark, I’m so sorry.”

Mark just shifts closer to him, looping his arms around Eduardo’s neck and Eduardo decides it’s enough.

He manages to find Mark’s bedroom, which thankfully has a full bed and sweats for both of them and he guides Mark into it, wrapping an arm around Mark and pulling the blankets over both of them.

Someone – he suspects Dustin – has toweled off Ianthe and she pads into the room and hops onto the end of the bed, watching them carefully, like she’s trying to guard them from each other.

“It’s okay,” Eduardo says, maybe to himself or maybe to Mark or maybe even to Ianthe. “I’m here now.”

 

Eduardo wakes up to Mark’s fingertips on his brow, skating down his nose, tracing his lips, and repeating it all over again. He wonders how long Mark has been doing this, has been reacquainting himself with Eduardo’s face and he feels himself give way, just a little, beneath the weight of Mark’s desperation, beneath his touches.

“Mark,” he rasps out, because he’s sure it’s four in the morning or so, and Mark smiles at him. “Mark, it’s too early.”

“You’re here,” Mark says instead of answering, and he stops tracing Eduardo’s face so he can snuggle into Eduardo’s neck, uncharacteristically vulnerable, and Eduardo hears him inhale and copies him, letting Mark’s scent wash over him.

“I am,” Eduardo says after a long moment, lazy and tired, and he wraps an arm around Mark, tries to prove it to him. “I’m here, Mark.”

“How long?” Mark asks, muffled against Eduardo’s neck, and Eduardo suddenly wonders what Mark thinks of him, if the Eduardo in his head is tainted by this perceived abandonment, or if Mark has forgiven him.

“I’m not going to leave,” Eduardo tells him. “I understand, now. I need to be out here, with you.”

Mark nods, and Eduardo wonders if he’s going to fall back asleep or if Mark is suddenly going to pull himself together, to wake up fully and to hide behind dry wit and distance.

“We did it, Wardo,” he slurs into Eduardo’s neck and Eduardo knows it’s the former, rubs circles on the bare skin of Mark’s back and traces each bump of his spine. “We did it.”

\---

When Eduardo wakes up a second time, Mark is still asleep, but there’s enough light streaming in through the window that he knows it’s time to get up. He doesn’t bother to pull on a shirt; just pads through the house in Mark’s too-small sweat pants.

The house is trashed, with empty beer bottles everywhere. There’s a hole in one wall and a large hookah sits, filthy and abandoned, in a corner.

He finds Dustin staring helplessly down at a kettle in the kitchen, and the bags beneath his eyes are almost as dark as the ones Mark has.

“Dustin,” Eduardo says, because he hadn’t really said hello last night, had been too distracted.

“War-doh!” Dustin says, mustering a smile, and he does look happy to see Eduardo, looks relieved. “Hey man.”

“This house is a mess,” Eduardo says, sitting at the counter and watching Dustin. “What happened here?”

Dustin makes a face. “Sean Parker,” he says, voice almost as dry as Mark’s and it reminds Eduardo that they’ve been friends for years.

“Sean? Sean’s _here?!”_

“Nope,” Dustin says. “Ugh, I have no idea how to make tea.”  
“Why do you want to make tea? And where’s Sean?”

“Mark threw him out,” Dustin says absently, opening the top of the kettle and peering into it. “People always make tea whenever something goes wrong. Like in Harry Potter.”

“That’s because they’re British,” Eduardo points out, but he gets up and takes the kettle from Dustin. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me everything and I’ll make you tea, ok?”

Dustin obeys, slumping into a chair without grace and watching Eduardo fill the kettle and set it to boil.

“I’m going to write an e-how on how to make tea,” Dustin announces after watching Eduardo for a few minutes. Eduardo grins at him before turning to rummage in the cupboards, producing chamomile tea and sitting it down on the counter.

“Okay,” he says, pointing a spoon at Dustin. “Talk.”

“Mark and Sean got into a big fight,” Dustin drags a hand through his ginger hair, making it stand on end. “I’ve never heard Mark that angry.”

“What were they fighting about?” Eduardo asks, unable to stop himself, and Dustin side-eyes him, eyebrows raised.

“You should ask Mark that,” he says calmly. “I don’t really know, anyway. I was busy coding but I saw Mark punch the wall, and then he threw Sean out and told him to not come back.”

“Wow,” Eduardo breathes.

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “It was right before his little hunger-strike thing.”

“Has he ever done that before?” The kettle is starting to hum a bit, and Eduardo rubs the top of the counter absently, wondering if Dustin will answer or if he’ll say that he should ask Mark, because that’s private.

“Once,” Dustin says after a minute, slow and careful. “After he freaked out and fucked up his face –” Dustin brushes a finger along the skin under his own eyes and Eduardo thinks of Mark’s scars. “He just sat in the hospital bed and ignored everyone. No one could reach him.”

“What happened?” Eduardo asks, curious despite himself, heart aching at the thought of a young, frail Mark hunched over in a hospital bed, hugging his knees and trying to peel the bandages off his face.

“I don’t know,” Dustin shrugs. “He just snapped out of. I think it was because his mom and his doctor made him a list of his options, and so he didn’t feel so overwhelmed.”

“Do you think that’s why he did it?”

“Yeah. I mean, I can’t imagine being overwhelmed and in the dark, you know? I think Mark just shuts down because he doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

“Yeah,” Eduardo breathes. The kettle is shrieking, now, and they’re silent as Eduardo wraps his hand in a towel and pours Dustin a cup of tea, offering him the mug and the honey bear he found.

“Thanks,” Dustin mumbles. “Wardo…I’m glad you’re here.”

Eduardo blinks at him, unsure what to say, too busy wondering if the fact Mark was overwhelmed was his fault.

“Like, I don’t mind taking of Mark, you know?” Dustin asks, gesturing tiredly with his spoon, “but _Mark_ minds. You’re the only one he doesn’t really mind, and it’s awful when you’re away.”

“I don’t intend to leave,” he says finally.

“Good,” Dustin says. He sips his tea and makes a face. “This tastes like grass.” Eduardo grins at him and Dustin shrugs. “Hey, I wanted to try it. Now go talk to Marky Mark and figure this out, okay?”

 

Mark is awake when Eduardo comes back, and he smiles when Eduardo shuts the door behind him, sitting up and patting the bed next to him.

Eduardo obeys, crawling up to Mark and kissing him, letting Mark cup the lines of his jaw and trace patterns on Eduardo’s neck.

Eduardo _wants_ – he wants to love Mark, to let Mark fuck him into oblivion and then curl up with him, lazy and loving, but he wants to know that Mark is okay, wants to know what happened and why Mark decided sitting outside in the rain would be a good idea.

So he tears himself away from Mark and curls a hand around Mark’s arm, reminding himself that Mark is here, that they’re okay.

“Mark,” he says, quiet and slow, and Mark stills. “Mark, why don’t you tell me what happened, and why you reacted like that, okay?”

 

It’s clear that Mark doesn’t _want_ to tell him, which makes it worse, makes Eduardo unable to stop himself from rubbing a finger down Mark’s cheek, trying to make him relax.

“You have to listen,” Mark says finally, staring blindly down at the bed. “You have to listen and not interrupt until the end, okay?”

“Okay.” Eduardo says. “I promise.”

 

“Sean wanted to cut you out of the company,” Mark says, fast, and Eduardo jerks, heart stuttering painfully against his ribs. “I – he told me it was best for the company, because you weren’t getting us investors and you didn’t understand about ads, and you wouldn’t _listen_ , you weren’t _here_ , you were going to be left behind. But I – I couldn’t do that too you, Wardo.” He breathes in, eyelashes fluttering and Eduardo realizes that Mark is _afraid_ , whether of losing Eduardo or how Eduardo will react, but it’s still fear that he’s responsible for and it distracts him from the anger bubbling inside hm.

“I know that I can make you understand,” Mark says, “but Sean wouldn’t listen to me, and he threatened to cancel all of the meetings he had made for us, with investors.” Mark swallows, hard, and Eduardo wants to say something, but Mark’s order makes him keep his mouth shut. “I told him to get out, that he wasn’t welcome here anymore. I – I know you can find us investors, and, I mean, I’d rather have this company fail _with_ you than succeed without you.” He pauses, then flushes hot, realizing what he’s just said. “Not that – You’re not going to make us fail, I didn’t mean that, but I just. I couldn’t cut you out, and I didn’t want to keep you in the dark. I needed to tell you.”

 _But you didn’t_ , Eduardo thinks, and it’s like Mark can hear him because he twitches. “It was just…it was too much,” he says after a minute. “I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to tell you over the phone.”

“You scared me,” Eduardo bursts out, and Mark flinches but doesn’t yell at him. “I just – Mark, if you need me, if there’s anything you ever need to tell me, come to me, okay? I’m the guy that wants to help.”

“Okay,” Mark says. Then: “You’re not mad?”

“Of course I’m mad,” Eduardo says. “But – mostly at Sean.”

“I fucked up, Wardo,” Mark admits. “I’m sorry. But, I need you out here. I need my CFO, and I need you.”

“Even though I’m a shitty CFO?” Eduardo demands, voice tight, and Mark scowls at him.

“You’re not a shitty CFO, Wardo. You just need to trust me on ads, okay?” He shifts, uncomfortable. “I told you, even if you are a CFO I’d rather have the company fail with you in it then succeed without you.”

“Why?” Eduardo demands, watches crimson spread from Mark’s cheeks to his neck and ears.

“It wouldn’t be worth it,” Mark mumbles.

 

They’re quiet after that, Eduardo lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling, because he doesn’t really know what to do or what to say.

He thinks about what would have happened if Mark hadn’t told Sean to get out, if Mark had gone along with it, and the pain of that imagined betrayal is so deep that Eduardo gasps from it.

 _I would have never forgiven you_ he thinks, appalled, and cannot imagine a world in which Mark would have done that, would have been able to separate business and emotion into two different neatly labeled boxes.

“Wardo,” Mark says finally, and he’s propped up on one arm, lying next to Eduardo and biting his lip. “Wardo, please stay.”

“I intend too,” Eduardo says finally, and is rewarded with Mark’s sigh of relief, with Mark’s fingertips finding his face and tracing the lines of his nose and cheekbone. “But I have to settle things with my family and apply to Stanford, first.”

“So you’ll have to leave again,” Mark says, flat, and Eduardo rolls over to him, pressing a kiss to Mark’s temple.

“I’ll come back,” Eduardo tells him. “I need you, too. I forgot how much I needed you until it was almost too late.”

  
Mark rolls on top of him, shutting Eduardo up, and pins Eduardo’s hands above his head with one hand, face determined.

“Mark,” Eduardo manages to say, because his heart is beating in his throat and he’s suddenly hard, hard from Mark just taking control, hard from Mark pinning his arms and ordering him around.

Everything falls into place when Mark shoves Eduardo’s sweats and briefs down and wraps a hand around his dick, fisting it roughly before moving on to drag a finger over Eduardo’s balls and hole.

“Mark, _fuck_ ,” Eduardo babbles, and Mark smiles in his direction before moving to the side of the bed, fishing the lube out of the cabinet and slicking up his fingers.

He works three fingers into Eduardo, slow and gradual. Eduardo has never been one for patience so he keeps trying to bear down on Mark’s fingers, only to have Mark a warning hand around Eduardo’s hip and say, _Wardo, hold still._

It’s impossibly hot, and Eduardo obeys, feeling his cock twitch.

When Mark finally manages to roll on the condom and lines them up, Eduardo is so hard he thinks he’s going to die, and he’s breathing in ragged gasps. But then Mark pushes in and it burns and it’s so sweet, it’s the pain he’s always craved. Eduardo can feel his eyes roll back, can feel his mouth go slack as Mark’s weight banishes every thought except for _Mark, Mark, I love you, Mark._

Mark fucks him, slow and gentle, letting Eduardo’s cock drool all over his stomach and thighs. Eduardo still has his hands held against the headboard in obedience, and he holds as still as possible as Mark sucks a bruise into his neck or thumbs a nipple.

“Wardo,” Mark murmurs as he kisses Eduardo’s throat, hand splayed on the side of his neck, “Wardo, god, I love you, I need you, please come back.”

The words are enough; enough to make him come, shuddering through his orgasm, and enough to decrease the weight dragging on his shoulders, enough to illuminate everything until he can see pieces of Mark clearly. Mark is like a stained glass window and there’s a story behind each part of him, stories Eduardo wants to stick around and learn.

“Mark,” he gasps, and then Mark is coming, fucking him hard and grasping Eduardo’s shoulders so tightly that Eduardo feels himself bruise and doesn’t even mind. He craves Mark’s touch, loves wearing it, loves being able to look at himself in the mirror and see Mark on him.

“I love you too,” Eduardo sighs when Mark slips out of him, and Eduardo disposes of the condom, sitting back and throwing an arm over Mark’s side. He feels Mark smile into his skin and there’s an overwhelming trust in him, in that smile, that makes Eduardo think, again, about drowning.

\---

It’s easy to pack up his dingy apartment in New York and send it out to California, easy to call and tell Harvard that _no, I won’t be returning._

It’s less easy to realize that there’s no guarantee that Facebook will make it, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll find investors or if Eduardo will be able to afford college.

He told Dustin, before he left, to call Chris, because Chris missed him, and he thinks despairingly of Chris and Erica and Christy, how they’ll all be at Harvard without him, how he’ll be on the opposite coast trying to keep the love of his life fed and well rested.

Eduardo thinks about telling his father, thinks about sitting on one end of the dining table and announcing _I’m leaving Harvard and I’m leaving you and I’m never coming back._ He thinks about a wine glass that will surely fly at his head, thinks about how frail his mother is and tries not to think about abandonment.

 _You abandoned me_ he thinks on the plane ride back to Florida, drumming his hands on his knees and. _You made your bed. Now lie in it._

But he’s not that heartless, not that cruel, so when he reaches his house he takes his Mãe aside, propping her cane against the wall, and explains.

“I’m not coming back, Mãe. Not ever.” her face crumples and she clutches at him weakly, dainty hands soft and weak.

“Come with me,” he says. “Leave Pai. I know – I know this marriage isn’t what you hoped. I know you’re not happy. But it doesn’t have to be this way, Mãe. You can be happy again.”

His Mãe straightens up and moves, slowly, out of his grip, and he knows that he’s lost her.

“You’re wrong,” she says. “I am happy with him. I love your father. And he loves you, Eduardo. He just has problems showing it.”

“Mãe,” Eduardo says, desperate, but she looks up at him serenely.

“I know you and your Pai don’t see eye to eye, but he has gotten better. He’s promised to never upset me again.”

“He always promises,” Eduardo says, translating _upset me_ to _hurt me_ and wonders about free will, wonders about rescuing someone that doesn’t want to be rescued, wonders if that’s really rescuing them or if it’s ruining their life.

“I am staying with your Pai,” his Mãe says, smiling up at him, and it’s like she doesn’t understand. “I took a vow, Eduardo. _Até a morte nos separe_.” Until death do us part.

Maybe denial is the worst kind of bravery because it’s a sick, foolish hope, a hope that makes you curl inward and rot from within, but his Mãe is full of it, and she smiles up at him, not expecting him to understand.

He doesn’t want to understand. He’s afraid that if he understands, he’ll fall back into the trap that is waiting for him, back beneath his father’s thumb and cruel words.

 _I don’t want to be you,_ he tells her silently, kissing her on the cheek a final time. He supposes he’s grateful to her, for showing him how bad things can be really be, for showing him what he doesn’t want to be.

It doesn’t help. It doesn’t make it hurt less.

“Goodbye, Mãe,” he says quietly. “Eu te amo.”

 

Eduardo’s father comes home when Eduardo is almost done packing up his room. He knows that he doesn’t have very long before his Mãe tells his father everything, knows he doesn’t have very long until he faces his father’s scorn and anger full on.

Somehow, he’s calm.

He thinks about why he’s doing this, thinks about Mark and the dimples his smile punches in his cheeks, thinks about how Mark is brave enough to walk through a dark world everyday.

If Mark can do that, then Eduardo can do this.

Besides, Mark is counting on him. This isn’t just for Eduardo. This is for Facebook, and more importantly, this is for Mark.

 

He goes down the stairs slowly, looking at the walls, at their family photos, dragging his suitcase behind him.

He’s never had a lot of stuff but it feels like a lot of stuff now, and he had to pick and choose what he wanted to take. But in the end, he felt divorced from most of the objects in his room. His happy childhood ended in Brazil. He has no good memories in this house, not anymore.

His Mãe is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Eduardo tries not to falter, tries to walk right past her, but she says: “Your Pai is waiting for you in the dining room.”

 

Eduardo thinks about not going, thinks about walking away without saying anything to his father, but he wants to do this the right way, wants to settle it forever. So he sets down his bag near the front door and straightens his suit jacket before striding into the dining room.

His father is sitting at the head of the table, eating a salad and looking unconcerned. He’s not a large man – Eduardo is taller than he is – but his presence fills the room, making Eduardo out of breath and foolish. He’s suddenly five years old again, tugging on his father’s pant leg, only to be ignored.

“I hear you think that you are leaving,” his father announces, lips twisting in a sneer.

When Eduardo doesn’t answer, his father scowls, voice cracking like a whip. “You idiot boy. Where will you go? How will you pay for school? You won’t get anywhere without me.”

“I’m leaving, Pai,” Eduardo says steadily.

“You are nothing without me,” his Pai spits. “Do you like being nothing? You will never succeed without me, Eduardo, you will never do anything or get anywhere.”

“No, Pai,” Eduardo says finally, because he’s tired of this. “I’m nothing _with_ you.”

His father surges up, terrible and fierce, and throws his plate at Eduardo; it misses and shatters against the wall, and Eduardo tries not to shake and fails.

“I’m leaving so I can become something.” It hurts to say, but it’s the truth, because he’s no longer nothing; he is Eduardo E. Saverin, CFO of Facebook, and he is in love with Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. “I’m never coming back. Goodbye, Pai.”

He passes his mother on the way out. She doesn’t look at him, is too busy hurrying into the dining room.

It’s the thing that convinces him to leave.

\---

He ends up sitting in first class on the plane ride back to California, sitting next to an older gentlemen who introduces himself as Peter Thiel.

“Eduardo Saverin. Nice to meet you,” Eduardo says, and a smile isn’t too hard to force. It’s slowly sinking in that he’s escaped, that he never has to go back, that he’s going to go home to Mark and never leave.

“What do you do for a living, Eduardo?” Peter asks after they trade opinions on the latest issue of _the Economist_ , and Eduardo smiles.

“I’m the CFO of a company called Facebook. It’s a new company, you might not have heard of it.”

“No, I have,” Peter says, his face lighting up. “I was actually trying to get in contact with your CEO, but I didn’t know how to reach him. You’re just the person I’ve been wanting to talk to.”

Eduardo mentally puts on his business suit; outwardly, he smiles a little bigger. “Mr. Thiel,” he says, like they’re in an office and not sitting in First Class on an airplane. “How can I help you?”

\---

_Epilogue:_

It’s not perfect, Eduardo’s new life. Mark is still difficult to read, is still a dark, vast ocean with too many secrets and an unwillingness to give away his feelings. They fight, often, because Eduardo is frail right now, because he’s trying to become someone and he craves the assurance that Mark loves him, that Mark needs him.

But loving Mark feels less like drowning and less like treading water, and more like floating, and it’s easier for Mark to say _love you, Wardo_ before falling asleep or after sex, when he’s holding Eduardo in his arms and enjoying the smell and feel of him.

 

Eduardo applies to Stanford and is accepted, with a full scholarship. He wonders how much that had to do with the fact that he’s also CFO of the world’s most successful company right now, wonders if anyone at Stanford recognized his family name and looked up his father. But mostly, he tries to enjoy it, reminds himself that he got in (as far as he knows) on his own merit, and it’s enough.

 

Peter Thiel, the man Eduardo sat next to on the plane ride back to Palo Alto, ends up making a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook, saying that he admires how Eduardo pitched it and admires Mark’s dedication. Eduardo admits to Mark that Peter also thinks ads are a bad idea, at least at this time, which makes Mark throw back his head and laugh.

 

They move into a house together, with a backyard for Ianthe to play in and handles installed in the shower so Mark can maneuver in and out of it. It feels like home almost instantly, because it smells like Mark and feels like braille, and it’s enough.

 

He tells Mark, slowly, in bits and pieces, about his childhood; about his father, and his mother, and everything that has happened to him. He tells Mark why he decided to leave, and how he did it, and Mark holds him for a long time before murmuring _You aren’t nothing, Wardo._ Eduardo takes it as a huge success that he believes him.

 

But it’s not until the million member party that it all falls into place, that Eduardo takes Mark into his arms and dances with him to music only they can hear, Mark breathing _We did it, Wardo_ into his ear and then reaching up to trace Eduardo’s answering smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, this is canon divergent. I knew early on that I couldn’t write Eduardo forgiving Mark and still stay true to the character, because Eduardo has given Mark so much and has been betrayed by most of the people in his life, so for Mark to betray him would be unforgivable.  
> The title, as I’m sure you can tell, is taken from Andrea Gibson’s poem _I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out._  
>  The quote _‘Some things you will think of yourself…some things, God will put into your mind’_ is from the Odyssey, which is actually the first book/poem Mark read in Braille. I wanted to work that tidbit of information in but couldn’t find a good place.  
>  Likewise, the reason Mark always snorts whenever people say ‘see you’ is because he can’t see them. Gallows humor. Couldn’t figure out how to explain that.  
> Ianthe is a red Siberian husky with one blue eye and one brown eye. [Here](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m53pfd4eLv1qgbww1o1_500.jpg) is a picture. Most guide dogs are not huskies; they are usually German Shepherds or Golden Retrievers or Labs, but I wanted a husky for Mark. Ianthe is also a woman in Greek Mythology whose lover, Iphis, was a woman raised as a man. In order to marry Ianthe, she prayed to the Gods and they turned her into a man. Ianthe is also the name of a young girl so beautiful that when she died, the Gods made purple flowers grow around her grave.  
> Everything concerning braille and technology for the blind is absolutely true. Ianthe’s commands are real commands. The cane Mark uses is something many blind people use; it’s usually white with a red stripe. And the way Mark went blind has happened to several people, most famously to Sonora Webster Carver. The movie _Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken_ chronicles this, and is where I first got the idea of Mark having retinal detachment from.  
>  This fic was largely inspired by [this](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0saldouOO1rrctr8o1_500.jpg) image on tumblr, which is also the bronze braille message that Eduardo finds in Miami and mails to Mark. I saw it and immediately though, we have several deaf aus; why not a blind one? Personally, I think being blind really explains Mark’s character; he’s not such a brat in this story. That might detract from the story, however, I have no idea. Likewise, it only makes sense to me that blind!Mark would also be dominant in bed. This is unfortunate because sub!Mark is my kink ;____;  
> Lastly, Eduardo’s journey that he goes through in this fic is one of a character who has PTSD, who is trying to recover from chronic child abuse. This fic is actually very personal, and serves as a love letter to anyone trying to recover; it is possible, it just takes time. It does get better.  
> Thank you so much for reading. <3
> 
> visit me on [tumblr!](http://marnz.tumblr.com/) prompts welcome.


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